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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE OPEN DOOR 

A CHALLENGE TO MISSIONARY ADVANCE 



THE OPEN DOOR 



A Challenge to Missionary Advance 



Addresses Delivered Before the First 
General Missionary Convention of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, Held in 
Cleveland, Ohio, October 21 to 24, 1902 



EDITORS 

CHARLES H ( : FAHS 
STEPHEN Jf HERBEN 
STEPHEN OV'BENTON 



New York : EATON & MAINS 

Cincinnati: JENNINGS & PYE 

1903 



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vl*: 



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THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

FEB 12 *903 

„ Copyright Entry 
CLASS £^ XXc. No 
J ^COPY B. 



Copyright by 

EATON & MAINS 
1903 






IV 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Organization of the Convention 3-1 2 

The Convention Program c 13-20 

The Convention Addresses 21-337 

" The Purpose of the Convention " , 21-28 

Bishop Edward G. Andrews 

1 ' The Emergency " . . 29-34 

Rev. A. B. Leonard, LL.D. 

"Methodist Missions of the Nineteenth Century " 35~54 

Rev. J. M. Buckley, D.D. 

\ ' Spiritual Preparation for Missionary Service " 55-63 

Rev. A. H. Tuttle, D.D. 

" Home Allies in Our Work of Evangelization " . . 64-70 

H. K. Carroll, LL.D. 

' ' Our Opportunity ". 7 1-94 

Bishop C. H. Fowler 

' ' The Words are Spirit and Life ". 94-100 

Rev. W. I. Haven, D.D. 

"The Negro a Missionary Investment, a Missionary 

Investor " 100-1 1 1 

Rev. J. W. E. Bowen, D.D. 

"Our Foreign Populations and How to Reach Them " 11 2-1 20 
Rev. G. B, Addicks, D.D, 

"Our City Problem",... ,...,.,.... 121-134 

Rev 1 . F. M. North, D.Dr 



VI CONTENTS 

PAGE 

" The Open Door in Hawaii and the Philippines " 135-144 

Rev. H. C. Stuntz, D.D. 

"The Open Door in Latin Countries" 145-155 

Bishop C. C. McCabe 

"The Open Door in Eastern Asia" 155—163 

Bishop D. H. Moore 

" The Open Door in Africa " 163-181 

Bishop J. C. Hartzell 

" The Open Door in Southern Asia " 181-189 

Bishop J. M. Thoburn 

"Why the World Should be Speedily Evangelized".. 189-200 
Rev. E. M. Taylor, D.D. 

" What ' Retrenchment ' Means " 201-213 

Bishop Cyrus D. Fqss 

" It Tendeth to Poverty " 213-223 

Rev. J. W. Bashford, D.D. 

"What the Presiding Elder Can Do " 223-231 

Rev. W. T. Perrin, D.D. 

" What the District Missionary Secretary Can Do "... 232-237 
Rev. W. F. Oldham, D.D. 

"What the Pastor Can Do " 238-243 

Rev. J. O. Wilson, D.D. 

"What the Sunday School Superintendent Can Do". 244-249 
Mr. W. W. Cooper 

" What a Local Church Has Done " 250-255 

Rev. J. W. Magruder 

" The Place of Prayer in Missionary Work " 255—259 

Bishop H. W. Warren 

"Young People and Missions " 259-267 

Mr. S. Earl Taylor 



CONTENTS vii 

" Reasons Why the Home Church Must Go Forward " 268-278 
Mr. J. R. Mott 

Introduction to the Financial Session 278-280 

Rev. John F. Goucher, LL.D. 

"Beloved, if God So Loved Us " 281-287 

Rev. W. F. McDowell, D.D. 

"The Need of Missionary Information in the Home 

Church " ~ 

287-301 

Rev. George B. Smyth, D.D. 

"The Education and Training of Young People in 

Scriptural Habits of Giving ". 301-31 1 

Rev. C. E. Locke, D.D. 

: 'What Money Means for Educational Work in the 

Foreign Fields " 311-315 

Rev. F. D. Gamewell, Ph.D. 

"An Appeal from China " 3l6 

Mr. Chen Wei Cheng 

"The Responsibility Resting upon the Delegates to 

This Convention" 316-321 

Mr. John R. Mott 

"Christ Our Living Leader" 321-334 

Mr. Robert E. Speer 

The Closing Address 334-337 

Bishop James M. Thoburn 

The Section Conferences 338-382 

"The Woman's Foreign Missionary Society—Its Equip- 
ment and Outlook " 338-345 

Mrs. J. T. Gracey 

" The Work of the Woman's Home Missionary Society " 346-348 
Mrs. Delia Lathrop Williams 



viii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

"The Value of Industrial Training in Our Southern 

Schools " 348-353 

Mrs. W. P. Thirkield 

" Alaska, Hawaii, and Porto Rico " 354~35 6 

Mrs. May Leonard Woodruff 

"The Deaconess as a Missionary Worker " .... 357-359 

Rev.W. F. Oldham, D.D. 

What the Presiding Elder and the District Missionary 

Secretary Can Do •••... 359-362 

Section Conference Discussion 

What the Pastor Can Do, 363-378 

Section Conference Discussion 

What the Lay Worker Can Do 378-381 

Section Conference Discussion 

What the Young People Can Do 382 

Section Conference Policy 

Appendix • e . • . 383-391 

Index , 393-404 



THE FIRST 

GENERAL MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

OF THE 

METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 



THE ORGANIZATION OF THE 
CONVENTION 



At the Ecumenical Missionary Conference held in New York The 
city in 1900 the delegates of the Methodist Episcopal Church, j^^kal 
South, met to discuss ways and means of taking back the message Conference 
of that Conference to their denomination. After much prayer 
and discussion it was decided that the most effective way of doing 
so would be to reproduce it as far as possible upon a denomina- 
tional basis — in other words, to arrange for a great denomina- 
tional missionary convention under the auspices of their 
Missionary Board. A committee was appointed and certain 
delegates from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, con- 
sulted with delegates from the Methodist Episcopal Church con- 
cerning ways in which the proposed convention of the Church 
South might be made a great success. 

In April, 1901, more than a thousand delegates from the The 
Southland assembled in New Orleans, and for seven days they con^enti^ 118 
sat under the spell of one of the most powerful missionary con- 
ventions which have been held on this continent. Five repre- 
sentatives from the Methodist Episcopal Church were privileged 
to attend the New Orleans Convention as representatives of the 
denomination. These visitors were: Bishop J. M. Thoburn, 
Drs. John F. Goucher and F. D. Gamewell, and Messrs. John R. 
Mott and S. Earl Taylor. At the conclusion of the convention 
the Methodist Episcopal representatives were unanimously of 
the opinion that their Church should profit by such a convention, 
when the opportune moment should arrive. 

In the fall of 1901 the General Missionary Committee met in 
Pittsburg. At that time it became necessary to cut the missionary 
appropriations about eight per cent. This, preceded by the cut 
of more than two per cent of the year previous, reduced our 
missions to a desperate condition and made it evident to all that 
something must be done, and done quickly. Upon recommenda- 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The 

Open Door 
Emergency 
Commission 



The 

Convention 

Planned 



tion of the General Missionary Committee the Board of Man- 
agers elected field secretaries and appointed an Open Door 
Emergency Commission to do all within its power to bring to 
the Church a realization of the imperative needs of our mission 
fields throughout the world. 

The Open Door Emergency Commission had its first meeting 
on January 2, 1902, continuing for two days. It was a memor- 
able meeting, not only because of the plans which were devised 
at that time, but also because of the deep spirit of prayer which 
was manifest throughout. As is now generally known, plans 
were at that time devised which contributed largely during 
eight months of effort toward the increase of $112,000 in the 
regular collections of the Church for the fiscal year, this increase 
making possible an increase of appropriations to our foreign 
missions of fifteen and a half per cent and to our home missions 
of thirteen and a half per cent. 

The plans of the Commission, however, did not terminate in 
an endeavor simply to increase the regular collections of the 
Church, for it was felt that the Church must be awakened to the 
importance of doing larger things for the extension of the king- 
dom of Christ throughout the world than had ever yet been 
attempted, and it was soon seen that one of the most effective 
ways of stirring the Church would be by bringing together the 
leaders of the Church in a delegated convention. It was felt by 
the members of the Commission that the time for such a con- 
vention was ripe because of the emergency confronting the 
Church, and because of the fact that it would be possible to hold 
the convention midway between the sessions of the General Con- 
ference. It was decided, therefore, that the year's work should 
culminate in a great convention which should be held in 
October just preceding the General Missionary Committee 
meeting. 

Because of the important questions, financial and other, which 
were involved in planning for such a convention, the Commission 
determined to move with deliberation in the arranging of all 
details. Information was obtained concerning the plan of 
organization of the New York Ecumenical Missionary Confer- 
ence, of the New Orleans Convention, of the International Stu- 
dent Missionary Conference (held in London in January, 1900), 
and, in addition to this, a committee was appointed to visit the 



ORGANIZATION 5 

Student Volunteer Convention held in Toronto, the last of 
February, 1902, to make a most thorough investigation, to meet 
during the closing days of the convention, and to formulate a 
report to the Commission as to whether or not, in view of the 
information secured, it seemed feasible to project a general mis- 
sionary convention for the Methodist Episcopal Church. The 
committee brought back a favorable report, and the Commission 
at once appointed the following Program Committee: Bishop Program 
E. G. Andrews, Drs. A. B. Leonard, H. K. Carroll, and John F. Appointed 
Goucher, and Mr. S. Earl Taylor, Bishop Andrews to be chairman 
and Mr. Taylor secretary. This committee was given full 
power to perfect all of the details concerning the program, and 
at a later date was made an Executive Committee for all purposes 
for which other specific provision was not made. 

The Program Committee proceeded to lay out its general plan 
of organization and to draw up the preliminary draft of a 
program, but before doing so it settled upon what it considered 
to be the purpose of the convention (inspiration, organization of 
the forces, prayer, and consultation). It also adopted the follow- 
ing basal principles: That no person should be put on the 
program as a compliment ; no one should be put on who had not 
been tried in convention work; and no one should be put on 
who would be apt to "miss fire." In the preliminary plan of 
organization two clear lines were laid down: 

First, that the Program Committee would consider itself as 
having charge of every detail of the convention, including the 
preparation of the program, the organization of the convention, 
the music, the control of the hall during convention hours, the 
accrediting of all delegates and the issuing of all tickets, adver- 
tising the convention through the press and providing for all 
expenses outside of those incurred by the local committees. 

Second, that in the place where the convention should be held 
a local Executive Committee should be organized and that this 
local Executive Committee should be asked to assume charge of 
the following lines of work: Securing the convention hall; 
providing a place for the missionary exhibit; providing for the 
overflow meetings; selecting and securing places of entertain- 
ment for the delegates on a self-supporting basis ; the reception 
of delegates, and the raising of the necessary finances for the 
local expenses. 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Cleveland 
Invites the 
Convention 



Committees 
Organized 



Promotion 
of Prayer 



When these lines had been laid down the secretary of the 
Program Committee was sent to Cleveland, O., to confer with 
the Ministerial Association, of that city, to know if Cleveland 
would be willing to entertain the convention in October of 1902. 
After careful consideration by the ministers and prominent lay- 
men of the city an invitation was extended, a local Executive 
Committee was appointed, and the secretary of the New York 
committee met with the local committee, explained to them the 
plan of organization which was proposed by the New York com- 
mittee, and left with them a typewritten outline of the detailed 
plan of organization of the convention. 

When the secretary reported to the New York committee that 
Cleveland was prepared to entertain the convention the following 
committees were appointed and instructed to begin their work: 
A committee on working up the delegations ; a committee on 
transportation ; a committee on the missionary exhibit ; a press 
and general advertising committee ; and a committee on printed 
matter. 

As soon as these committees had been thoroughly organized 
they quietly proceeded about their work. The committee on 
working up the delegations conducted a personal correspondence 
with sixty-five hundred possible delegates ; the committee on 
transportation began negotiations with the passenger associations 
to secure the reduced rates ; the committee on missionary exhibit 
laid out a comprehensive outline for the missionary exhibit, and 
six months in advance of the convention began correspondence 
with prospective exhibitors ; the committee on press and general 
advertising arranged for preliminary announcements in the 
Church papers early in the spring, and for a complete write-up of 
the convention in all of the Church papers for the first issue in 
October; the committee on printed matter produced the adver- 
tising literature for the convention ; and the secretary of the 
Program Committee, under its direction, supervised the various 
departments and sought to unify the work. 

The special preparations for the convention included the pro- 
motion of definite prayer for all the interests represented by the 
gathering, and for those who should attend it. A prayer card 
was sent to every prospective delegate, to all Methodist Episcopal 
missionaries, and to hundreds of others. The correspondence 
which came to the central office showed that the response to this 



ORGANIZATION 7 

prayer request was immediate, definite, and widespread. The 
missionaries on the field were especially earnest in this regard, in 
one instance all the missionaries at a given important station in 
China meeting daily for prayer immediately before and during 
the convention. 

The Cleveland local Executive Committee was organized in Preparation? 
April. Some of the subcommittees were appointed and a finan- at Cleveland 
cial canvass was started during the summer months. On August 
15 the local executive secretary went to Cleveland to establish 
convention headquarters for aggressive work. The convention 
was to be self-entertaining, each delegate (with the exception of 
missionaries and some privileged classes) being expected to pay 
for his entertainment. In addition to all available hotel accom- 
modations it was necessary to provide entertainment for about 
two thousand delegates in homes. To secure hospitality in the 
desired class of homes repeated notice was called to the conven- 
tion through the Cleveland daily press, through weekly church 
bulletins, and by specially prepared circulars and letters. To 
enlist the members of the local churches in prayer for the con- 
vention, a specially prepared prayer card was distributed among 
the churches of the city two months previous to the convention. 
Other printed matter aiming to promote prayer and cooperation 
on the part of the local churches was distributed on successive 
Sundays through the pews. Nine committees were appointed 
and employed in the local work, two hundred and thirty-one 
workers from the several Epworth Leagues composing these 
committees. In addition twenty-two students from neighboring 
Methodist colleges were secured to assist in ushering. 

Two days in advance of the convention twenty-three energetic 
young pastors and laymen who had had experience in helping to 
organize previous conventions were assembled in Cleveland as a 
special working force. Every department of the convention 
work was placed under the immediate supervision of a depart- 
mental head and this departmental head was given three or four 
trusted lieutenants who assisted him in looking after the details. 

The following special convention committees were organized : Special 
A business committee ; a committee to supervise the seating and committees 
the ventilation of the hall; a committee on ushers; a committee 
on printing ; a committee on decorations ; a committee on an- 
nouncements ; a committee on speakers ; a committee to promote 



8 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The 

Convention 

Sessions 



Special 
Features 



prayer; a committee to prepare an address to the Church; a 
committee on section meetings; a committee on the financial 
session; a committee to circulate the hymnbooks and handbooks 
of the convention ; a committee on registration ; a committee on 
post office ; a committee on information bureau ; a committee on 
reception of delegates ; a committee on parcel stands. These sub- 
committees were under the direction of the departmental heads, 
who in turn reported to the General Executive Committee and 
the local executive secretary. 

The first session of the convention was held Tuesday afternoon, 
October 21, and the last session Friday evening, October 24. 
Nine main sessions and nine section conferences were held in all. 
The main sessions were held in the Armory of the Cleveland 
Grays, which had been decorated for the occasion by the flags of 
all nations, by appropriate Scripture texts, and by a great map 
of the world which hung back of the platform. This map was 
prepared originally for the Ecumenical Missionary Conference 
of 1900, and showed by colors the prevailing religions in all 
lands. Repeated references were made to the map by speakers, 
and its voiceless appeal must be counted one of the stirring mes- 
sages of the gathering. 

The section conferences met in the Armory, in the First 
Methodist Church, the Epworth Memorial Methodist Church, 
the Young Men's Christian Association building, and in other 
appointed places. 

It may be worthy of note that the convention differed in certain 
essential points from previous conventions which have been held 
in the Methodist Episcopal Church. 

There was a permanent presiding officer who had been asso- 
ciated with the Program Committee from the beginning, who 
knew the purposes of the committee and was therefore able to 
give unity to the convention. 

No detailed program of the convention sessions was printed, 
but instead a daily bulletin was issued, which gave in outline 
only the hours of the sessions and the places of meeting. 
While some were inclined to criticise this at first, it was soon 
recognized that not only was the attendance of the convention 
more carefully regulated thereby, but the spirit of the convention 
was improved. Instead of coming out of curiosity to hear some 
particular speaker of note, the delegates came to each session of 



ORGANIZATION 



9 



the convention convinced that such session would be worthy of 
attention and that every speaker would have a message. 

The convention was but three days and a half in length. It 
was thought by many that this plan not only allowed many busy 
pastors and laymen to attend all the sessions who otherwise could 
not do so, but it avoided the serious difficulty of having overtaxed 
the nervous energy of the audience. 

The program had been planned with reference to three funda- 
mental purposes : the study of Methodism's world field with its 
needs and opportunities; the presentation of tried methods of 
developing a strong base of supplies at home; the deepening of 
the spiritual life through unitedly waiting upon God. 

More than the usual amount of time was given to the speakers. 
While the program was compactly built, it was not overcrowded. 
This was especially noticeable in the evening sessions, where but 
two speakers were announced and these were given ample time 
to make the strongest possible presentation of their themes. 

The time limit for each speaker was closely adhered to. An 
electric signal operated from the side of the platform by a time- 
keeper, but sounding from underneath the speaker's stand, gave 
a warning note three minutes before the expiration of the time 
limit for each address, and again at the close of the period. This 
expediting of the sessions through a careful sense of time limits 
was greatly appreciated by the delegates. 

One of the vital features was the convention printed matter Printed 
which was prepared with reference to helping the delegates to Matter 
give the most to the convention in prayer, interest, and constant 
attendance on sessions, to get the most out of the convention in 
accurate information and inspiration, and to take back to their 
respective churches the convention message in the most effec- 
tive way. Among the most helpful pieces of printed matter was 
the handbook, a forty-page manual containing suggestions to 
delegates and many fundamental facts concerning Methodist 
missions. 

The music of the convention was dignified, helpful, and Music 
spiritually uplifting. A special edition of the missionary hymnal 
which had been used at the Jubilee Convention of Young Men's 
Christian Associations at Boston in 1901, and at the Student 
Volunteer Convention at Toronto in 1902, was printed for use 
at Cleveland. This hymnal included many of the noblest mis- 



10 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Financial 
Session 



A Fraternal 
Message 



sionary hymns of Christendom. Perhaps the most stirring hymn 
used at Cleveland was "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name !" 
sung to the stately tune of Miles' Lane. A precentor, with pianist 
and cornetist as his seconds, led the congregational singing. 
Aside from the united service of song, the only musical feature 
of the sessions was the singing by the Association quartet. The 
quartet selections were exceedingly well chosen, and always 
carried a spiritual message. Applause was discouraged and no 
encores were responded to. 

When the convention was first proposed it was decided that 
there should be a financial session which would provide a whole- 
some outlet for the convention enthusiasm. Months in advance 
prayer was enlisted that an offering worthy of the Church should 
be made at Cleveland. That this prayer was answered is evi- 
denced by the noteworthy subscription taken at the Thursday 
evening session, when over three hundred thousand dollars was 
subscribed. 

The convention was a representative gathering, and not a mass 
convention. Of those present there were : Bishops, officers of 
the Missionary Society, assistant and field secretaries of the Mis- 
sionary Society, missionaries, General Conference officers, general 
officers of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, general 
officers of the Woman's Home Missionary Society, general officers 
of the City Evangelization Union, general officers of the Epworth 
League, editors, educators, Student Campaigners, members of the 
Missionary Board and General Missionary Committee, Conference 
Missionary Society officers, presiding elders, district missionary 
secretaries, pastors, laymen, Sunday school superintendents, Con- 
ference and district Epworth League officers. There was a total 
attendance of accredited delegates of about nineteen hundred. 

Neither of the two men who were invited to speak at the con- 
vention as fraternal representatives of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South, was able to appear. However, a telegram was 
received from one of these, Dr. Walter R. Lambuth, missionary 
secretary of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, as follows : 
"The world for Christ ! Victory is ours through Him who loves 
us. In behalf of the Board of Missions of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, South, I greet you." Moreover, one of the most 
deeply interested visitors at the convention was Dr. G. B. Winton, 
editor of the Christian Advocate, the chief organ of the Meth- 



ORGANIZATION II 

odist Episcopal Church, South. Dr. Winton before his election 
to his present post was a missionary for years in Mexico, and 
previous to his going to that country he did effective service as 
pastor on the Pacific coast. His editorial references to the con- 
vention have been exceedingly cordial. 

Aside from the platform addresses the most interesting feature 
of the convention was the Missionary Exhibit. This was placed 
in the chapel of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, and was 
a center of attraction. 

The exhibit was purely educational, and was arranged so that The Exhibit 
the delegates might become more familiar with the history, the 
organization, and the present movements of missionary work in 
the Methodist Episcopal Church. While there were exhibits of 
the Missionary Societies of sister Churches, the one great aim of 
the exhibit was to set forth the work of our own Church both 
in the foreign and in the home field, and in the equally important 
operations required for the education of the home Church and 
the development of its missionary activities. 

Special attention was given to the work as outlined for the 
young people's societies. The missionary libraries, the mission 
study class books, helps from missionary committees, systematic 
giving, and practical missionary illustrations, maps, and charts 
were displayed so as best to show the present plans for work 
among young people. 

Another feature of the exhibit was the department of Meth- 
odist colleges as related to missions. There was shown in this 
department the statistics concerning the present status of mission- 
ary work as carried on by Methodist institutions. There was 
given the number of Student Volunteers, the number of students 
in mission study, the number of missionaries who had gone to 
the field from the several institutions, the number of students 
engaged in the summer campaign, the amount of money given 
to the support of missions, and the number of colleges wholly 
supporting a missionary. 

The convention gave to all those in attendance a large vision, Convention 
and to many of the delegates there came an enduring life pur- Results 
pose. The outcome of this vision and this purpose in larger 
gifts and nobler service may not be estimated. Certain note- 
worthy results of the gathering have already been seen. A 
great impetus has been given to the Church toward the fulfill- 



12 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

ment of its missionary obligation and opportunity. The con- 
vention message, told from hundreds of pulpits and through the 
Methodist press, has brought inspiration and helpfulness to 
thousands. From all parts of the country the word comes that 
increased efforts are making toward a larger financial support of 
the Missionary Society. The General Missionary Committee 
meeting at Albany in November was characterized by the same 
spirit of hopefulness and promise which was so conspicuously 
evident at Cleveland. This spirit of optimism has reached the 
mission fields and has stimulated the workers to a joyous enthu- 
siasm. Methodism now knows of the emergency, the Church is 
face to face with the great open doors, and advance is the order 
of the day. 



THE CONVENTION PROGRAM 



Tuesday, October 2\ 

AFTERNOON 
Presiding Officer, Bishop Edward G. Andrews 

Hymn, "Come, Thou Almighty King" . Congregation 

Scripture Reading (Isa. lx) and 

Prayer Bishop Cyrus D. Foss, Philadelphia, 

Pa. 

Hymn, "Jesus Shall Reign Where'er 
the Sun" Congregation 

"The Purpose of the Convention". . .Bishop Edward G. Andrews, New 

York 

Prayer The Rev. C. H. Daniels, D.D., Secre- 
tary American Board of Commis- 
sioners for Foreign Missions, Bos- 
ton, Mass. 

Hymn, "He Leadeth Me" Congregation 

"The Emergency" The Rev. A. B. Leonard, LL.D., Cor- 
responding Secretary Missionary 
Society, New York 

Solo, "Blessed Hope of the Coming 
of the Lord" The Rev. P. H. Metcalf, of the Asso- 
ciation Quartet 

"Methodist Missions of the Nine- 
teenth Century" The Rev. J. M. Buckley, D.D., Editor 

The Christian Advocate, New York 

Prayer The Rev. C. W. Smith, D.D., Editor 

Pittsburg Christian Advocate, Pitts- 
burg, Pa. 

"Spiritual Preparation for Mission- 
ary Sendee" The Rev. A. H. Tuttle, D.D., Pastor 

Methodist Episcopal Church, Sum- 
mit, N. J. 

Benediction The Rev. E. M. Taylor, D.D., Field 

Secretary Missionary Society 

EVENING 

Hymn, "The Son of God Goes Forth 

to War" Congregation 

Prayer The Rev. J. L. Humphrey, M.D., 

Veteran Missionary to India, Little 

Falls, N. Y. 



14 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

Music, "Come, Spirit, Come, with 
Light Divine" Association Quartet — Mr. Paul Gil- 
bert, Assistant Secretary of the 
Young Men's Christian Association, 
Duluth, Minn. ; Rev. P. H. Metcalf, 
Assistant Pastor Park Congrega- 
tional Church, Grand Rapids, Mich. ; 
Mr. C. M. Keeler, Des Moines, la. ; 
Mr. E. W. Peck, State Secretary 
Minnesota Young Men's Christian 
Association 

"Home Allies in Our Work of Evan- 
gelization" H. K. Carroll, LL.D., Assistant 

Corresponding Secretary Mission- 
ary Society 

Hymn, "The Morning Light is Break- 
ing" Congregation 

"Our Opportunity" Bishop C. H. Fowler, Buffalo, N. Y. 

Music, "The Treasures of Earth are 

Not Mine" Association Quartet 

Benediction Bishop J. M. Thoburn, Bishop for 

Southern Asia 



Wednesday, October 22 

MORNING 

Hymn, "All Hail the Power of Jesus' 

Name" ,. Congregation 

Scripture Reading (Psa. lxxii) and 

Prayer The Rev. C. W. Drees, D.D., Super- 
intendent Porto Rico Mission, San 
Juan, Porto Rico 
Hymn, "From Greenland's Icy Moun- 
tains" Congregation 

"The Words are Spirit and Life" The Rev. W. I. Haven, D.D., Secre- 
tary American Bible Society, New 
York 
Music, "Blessed is He that Readeth, 

and They that Hear the Word". . .Association Quartet 
"The Negro a Missionary Investment, 

a Missionary Investor" The Rev. J. W. E. Bowen, D.D., Pro- 
fessor in Gammon Theological 
Seminary, Atlanta, Ga. 
Prayer The Rev. H. A. Buttz, D.D., Presi- 
dent Drew Theological Seminary, 
Madison, N. J. 
"Our Foreign Populations and How 
to Reach Them" The Rev. G. B. Addicks, D.D., Presi- 
dent Central Wesleyan University, 
Warrenton, Mo. 
Hymn, "How Firm a Foundation". .Congregation 

"Our City Problem" The Rev. F. M. North, D.D., Secre- 
tary New York City Church Ex- 
tension and Missionary Society, 
New York 



THE CONVENTION PROGRAM 1 5 

Prayer The Rev. Hugh Johnston, D.D., 

Pastor First Methodist Episcopal 
Church, Baltimore, Md. 

Hymn, "Onward, Christian Soldiers" . Congregation 

"The Open Door in Hawaii and the 

Philippines" The Rev. H. C. Stuntz, D.D., Field 

Secretary Missionary Society, Kan- 
sas City, Mo. 

Doxology Congregation 

Benediction The Rev. J. R. Day, D.D., Chancellor 

Syracuse University, Syracuse, N. Y. 

AFTERNOON 

Hymn, "The Morning Light is Break- 
ing" Congregation 

Prayer The Rev. H. A. Gobin, D.D., Presi- 
dent De Pauw University, Green- 
castle, Ind. 

Hymn, "All Hail the Power of Jesus' 
Name" Congregation 

"The Open Door in Latin Countries". Bishop C. C. McCabe, Omaha, Neb. 

Hymn, "How Firm a Foundation". .Congregation 

"The Open Door in Eastern Asia". .Bishop D. H. Moore, Shanghai, China 

Hymn, "When I Survey the Won- 
drous Cross" Congregation 

"The Open Door in Africa" Bishop J. C. Hartzell, Bishop for 

Africa, Funchal, Madeira Islands 

Hymn, "Awake, my Soul, Stretch 
Every Nerve" Congregation 

Music, "Hark, Hark, my Soul. An- 
gelic Songs are Swelling" Association Quartet 

"The Open Door in Southern Asia". .Bishop J. M. Thoburn, Bishop for 

Southern Asia 

Prayer and Benediction Bishop H. W. Warren, Denver, Colo. 

EVENING 

Hymn, "Jesus Shall Reign Where'er 

the Sun" Congregation 

Prayer Air. Luther D. Wishard, Montclair, 

N. J. 
Music, "Peace, Peace, Wonderful 

Peace" Association Quartet 

Hymn, "How Sweet the Name of 

Jesus Sounds" Congregation 

"Why the World Should be Speedily 

Evangelized" The Rev. E. M. Taylor, D.D., Field 

Secretary Missionary Society, Cam- 
bridge, Mass. 
Music, "I'm a Pilgrim and I'm a 

Stranger" Association Quartet 

"What Retrenchment Means" Bishop Cyrus D. Foss, Philadelphia, 

Pa. 



l6 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

Doxology Congregation 

Benediction The Rev. J. F. Crouch, D.D., Pastor 

Mount Pleasant Avenue Methodist 
Episcopal Church, Germantown, 
Philadelphia, Pa. 



Thursday, October 23 

MORNING 

Hymn, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God 
Almighty" Congregation 

Scripture Reading (John xvii) and 

Prayer The Rev. George B. Winton, D.D., 

Editor Christian Advocate, Nash- 
ville, Tenn. 

Hymn, "All Hail the Power of Jesus' 
Name" Congregation 

"It Tendeth to Poverty"— "See that 
ye abound in this grace also" The Rev. J. W. Bashford, D.D., Presi- 
dent Ohio Wesleyan University, 
Delaware, O. 

Hymn, "Eternal Father, Strong to 

Save" Congregation 

"What the Presiding Elder Can Do". The Rev. W. T. Perrin, D.D., Presid- 
ing Elder Boston District, New 
England Conference 

Prayer The Rev. C. W. Millard, D.D., Pre- 
siding Elder New York District, 
New York Conference 

"What the District Missionary Secre- 
tary Can Do" The Rev. W. F. Oldham, D.D., As- 
sistant Secretary Missionary Soci- 
ety, Chicago, 111. 
Music, "Come Unto Me, All Ye that 
Labor" Quartet 

"What the Pastor Can Do" The Rev. J. O. Wilson, D.D., Pastor 

St. Andrew's Methodist Episcopal 
Church, New York 

"What the Sunday School Superin- 
tendent Can Do" Mr. W. W. Cooper, Kenosha, Wis. 

"What a Local Church Has Done".. The Rev. J. W. Magruder, Pastor 

Chestnut Street Methodist Episco- 
pal Church, Portland, Me. 

"The Place of Prayer in Missionary 

Work" Bishop H. W. Warren, Denver, 

Colo. 

Prayer Bishop H. W. Warren 

^Benediction Bishop John H. Vincent, Zurich, 

Switzerland 



THE CONVENTION PROGRAM I? 

AFTERNOON 
L Grays' Armory 

SECTION CONFERENCE FOR PASTORS 

Presiding Officer, The Rev. E. M. Taylor, D.D., Field Secretary 
Missionary Society 

2. First Methodist Episcopal Church 

SECTION CONFERENCE FOR PRESIDING ELDERS AND DISTRICT MISSIONARY 

SECRETARIES 

Presiding Officer, The Rev. F. D. Gamewell, Ph.D., Field Secretary 
Missionary Society 

3* Young Men's Christian Association Building 

SECTION CONFERENCE FOR LAYMEN 

Presiding Officer, Mr. Willis W. Cooper 

4. Hollenden Hotel 

section conference for editors 

Presiding Officer, Mr. D. D. Thompson, Editor Northwestern Christian 

Advocate 

5. First Methodist Episcopal Church — Pastor's Study 

section conference for college presidents 

Presiding Officer, The Rev. J. W. Bashford, D.D., President Ohio 
Wesleyan University 

6* Epworth Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church 

section conference for workers in epworth LEAGUES, SUNDAY schools, 

AND OTHER YOUNG PEOPLE^ ORGANIZATIONS 

Presiding Officer, Mr. Charles V. Vickrey, Member General Missionary 
Committee of the Epworth League 

EVENING 

Hymn, "All Hail the Power of Jesus' 

Name" Congregation 

Prayer Bishop J. M. Thoburn 

Hymn, "How Sweet the Name of 

Jesus Sounds" Congregation 

"Young People and Missions" Mr. S. Earl Taylor, Field Secretary 

for Young People's Work, Mission- 
ary Society 
Music, "Remember Now Thy Creator 

in the Days of Thy Youth" Association Quartet 

Hymn, "Jesus Shall Reign Where'er 

the Sun" Congregation 



1 8 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

"Reasons Why the Home Church 

Must Go Forward" Mr. J. R. Mott, General Secretary 

World's Student Christian Federa- 
tion, New York 
Financial Session, under supervision 

of The Rev. John F. Goucher, D.D., 

President Woman's College of 
Baltimore, Baltimore, Md. 
Benediction Bishop J. M. Thoburn 



Friday, October 24 

MORNING 

Hymn, "My Country, Tis of Thee". Congregation 
Scripture Reading (Psa. ii) and 

Prayer Mr. E. T. Colton, Student Secretary 

International Committee of Young 
Men's Christian Association 
Hymn, "When I Survey the Won- 
drous Cross" Congregation 

"Beloved, if God So Loved Us" The Rev. W. F. McDowell, D.D., 

Corresponding Secretary Board of 
Education, New York 
Music, "There's a Beautiful Land on 

a Far-away Strand" Association Quartet 

Report of the Committee on Resolu- 
tions The Rev. J. M. Buckley, Chairman 

"The Need of Missionary Informa- 
tion in the Home Church" The Rev. George B. Smyth, D.D., 

Assistant Secretary Missionary So- 
ciety, San Francisco, Cal. 
"The Education and Training of 
Young People in Scriptural Habits 

of Giving" The Rev. C. E. Locke, D.D., Pastor 

Delaware Avenue Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, Buffalo, N. Y. 
Hymn, "We Give Thee but Thine 

Own" Congregation 

"What Money Means for Educational 

Work in the Foreign Fields" The Rev. F. D. Gamewell, Ph.D., 

Field Secretary Missionary Society, 
New York 

"An Appeal from China" Mr. Chen Wei Cheng, Instructor of 

English, Peking University, Peking, 
China 
Hymn, "All Hail the Power of Jesus' 

Name" Congregation 

"The Responsibility Resting Upon the 

Delegates to this Convention" Mr. John R. Mott 

Prayer The Rev. W. F. McDowell, D.D. 

Hymn, "Take My Life and Let it 

Be" Congregation 

Benediction The Rev. J. W. Bashford, D.D. 



THE CONVENTION PROGRAM 19 

AFTERNOON 
• Grays* Armory 

SECTION CONFERENCE FOR THE WOMAN' S FOREIGN MISSIONARY SOCIETY 

Presiding Officer, Mrs. Cyrus D. Foss 

Hymn, "All Hail the Power of Jesus' 
Name" Congregation 

Scripture Reading (1 Pet. i) and 
Prayer Bishop Cyrus D. Foss 

Hymn, "Blest Be the Tie that Binds". Congregation 

"The Woman's Foreign Missionary 
Society — Its Equipment and Out- 
look" Mrs. J. T. Gracey, Rochester, N. Y. 

Hymn, "I am the Shepherd True". . .Association Quartet 

Address Bishop D. H. Moore 

2. Grays' Armory 

SECTION CONFERENCE FOR THE WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY 

Presiding Officer, Mrs. Clinton B. Fisk 

Preliminary Statement Chairman 

Hymn, "My Faith Looks Up to Thee". Congregation 

Prayer Bishop Cyrus D. Foss 

Report of General Corresponding 

Secretary Mrs. Delia Lathrop Williams, Dela- 
ware, O. 
"Value of Industrial Training in Our 

Southern Schools" Mrs. W. P. Thirkield, Cincinnati, O. 

"Alaska, Hawaii, and Porto Rico". ..Mrs. May Leonard Woodruff, 

Bloomfield, N. J. 
"The Deaconess as a Missionary 

Worker" The Rev. W. F. Oldham, D.D. 

Hymn, "America" Congregation 

Benediction The Rev. J. W. Bashford, D.D. 

3. First Methodist Episcopal Church 

CONFERENCE AND ANNUAL MEETING NATIONAL CITY EVANGELIZATION UNION 

Presiding Officers, Mr. James E. Ingram, Vice President of the National 
Union, Baltimore, Md., and Mr. George F. Washburn, President of 
the Boston City Missionary and Church Extension Society 

Devotional Exercises 

Preliminary Statement The Rev. Frank Mason North, D.D., 

Corresponding Secretary 

Addresses Mr. D. D. Thompson, Editor North- 
western Christian Advocate, Chi- 
cago, 111. The Rev. A. B. Leon- 
ard, D.D., Corresponding Secre- 
tary Missionary Society. Bishop 
J. W. Hamilton, San Francisco. 



20 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

Discussion 

Election of Officers 

Benediction The Rev. Joseph F. Berry, D.D., 

Editor The Epworth Herald 

EVENING 

Hymn, "Jesus Shall Reign Where'er 
the Sun" Congregation 

Prayer The Rev. F. M. North, D.D. 

Hymn, "Coronation" Congregation 

Hymn, "The Church's One Founda- 
tion" „ . Congregation 

Report of Committee on Address to 
the Church Bishop H. W. Warren, Chairman 

"Christ Our Living Leader" Mr. Robert E. Speer, Secretary 

Board of Foreign Missions, Presby- 
terian Church in the United States 
of America 

Closing Address Bishop J. M. Thoburn 

Music, "Speed Away, Speed Away, 
on Thine Errand of Light" Association Quartet 

Benediction Bishop E. G. Andrews 



THE CONVENTION ADDRESSES 



THE PURPOSE OF THE CONVENTION 

Bishop Edward G. Andrews 

In behalf of the missionary authorities of the Church, and, I 
may reverently add, in the name of Him who is the Saviour of 
the world and the Lord of missions, I bid you welcome to this 
First General Missionary Convention of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. 

It is convened because of great missionary successes; because The 
of wonderfully enlarged missionary opportunities and obligations ; Convention 
because of urgent missionary necessities. It is not an official Legislative 
assembly; it has neither legislative nor administrative authority 
or powers. It is not the General Conference, composed of dele- 
gates from the ministry and the churches, which quadrennially 
enacts laws and regulations for missionary organization and 
missionary activity. It is not the General Missionary Committee, 
which, under the order of the General Conference, annually meets 
in order to distribute among multitudinous and very needy fields 
the gifts of the Church — very large gifts, but nevertheless so 
scanty that the week of its work is commonly overshadowed by 
unspeakable sadness. It is not the Board of Managers of the 
Missionary Society, which month by month assembles at the 
offices in New York to administer the appropriations made by the 
General Committee, and to meet other emergencies that arise in 
the course of our missionary work. 

All these great official bodies are of vital importance to the An Assembly 
missionary work of the Church; but this Convention neither ? n Mission^ 
legislates nor administers. It is rather an assembly of men and 
women whom the Lord of missions has somewhat impressed with 
the grandeur of his purpose through Jesus Christ toward a lost 
world; who have already been inspired and used by the great 
Master of us all in his great missionary enterprise; who have 
already been blessed beyond expectation with his favor and sue- 



22 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

cess ; but who feel, and deeply feel, that a larger vision, a richer 
and more energetic inspiration, a more plenteous enduement of 
missionary liberality, sacrifice, and power are indispensable for 
the achievement of the world-wide tasks set before them. The 
tide rises ; but how far from full ! We have met, therefore, that 
we may together study more fully the great plan and love and 
work and resources of Him who died for all men, but who now 
reigns until the last enemy shall be put under his feet. We come 
to study our human world, its vastness and its variety; its sins 
and superstition and suffering; its immeasurable need and its 
great possibilities. We come to study our personal resources of 
every kind, temporal and spiritual, and the obligations thence 
resulting. We come to study the work which we have actually 
done, sure to find in the study much reason for thankfulness and 
joy; but also, it may be, many reasons for self-condemnation 
and humiliation. We have come for these purposes of consulta- 
tion, and, with these consultations, for common and earnest 
prayer to Him who calls us to this task. 
A Threefold The work of the Convention will therefore be threefold : First, 

Work thankfully to review the past; secondly, to study, honestly and 

faithfully, present missionary conditions, exigencies, perils, and 
hopes; thirdly, to find preparation for ourselves personally, and 
for the Church so far as we may influence it, for a future vastly 
transcending the present or the past. This is the scheme of our 
assembly. 

Let us be a little more specific: 

First. To use the words of a great statesman and orator, "The 
past at least is secure." We have closed a century marvelous in 
innumerable ways — a century of great increase in the world's 
population and wealth; a century of astonishing advancement of 
science, even into realms not before dreamed of; a century of 
inventive genius and skill which have made all nature tributary 
to the welfare of man and have made possible larger accomplish- 
ments in every field, even in spiritual fields; a century of great 
growth of the ideals of humanity, of liberty, and of justice, a 
growth expressing itself in new forms of government, in new 
legislation, and in humane endeavors such as have not been 
paralleled in all previous history. But a century which is mar- 
velous for these reasons is more marvelous for its missionary 
achievements. We must take note of this, both that we may 



THE PURPOSE OF THE CONVENTION 23 

render due homage to Him who is true and faithful to his word, 
and that we may be encouraged in the more difficult work that 
lies before us. 

What, then, are the facts ? Contrast the beginning and the end A Century's 
of the last century. Use the elaborate and reliable tables pre- Advance 
pared by Dr. Dennis. What do they declare? On the one hand, 
perhaps six or eight missionary societies ; on the other, more 
than five hundred, half of them immediately working in 
foreign fields, and the others auxiliary to them. On the 
one hand, perhaps one hundred ordained ministers labor- 
ing in heathen lands; on the other, six thousand ordained 
missionaries in those fields, assisted by perhaps twice that 
number of unordained missionaries, physicians, teachers, 
printers, helpers of every sort. On the one hand, a Church so 
small as scarcely to be counted ; on the other, a Church in heathen 
lands of one and a half million of communicants, with a Chris- 
tian population of three times that number. On the one hand, no 
single native helper of whom we know aught; on the other, 
seventy thousand native helpers, of whom four thousand are 
ordained ministers. And these communicants and these helpers 
have shown the soundness of their faith and their devotion to 
Christ by abundant labors and by sufferings which parallel the 
martyrdoms in Waldensian valleys, on Scottish hills, and at the 
Smithfield fires. It is a native Church that is competent, doubt- 
less, even if our aid were withdrawn, still to live and grow until 
it fills the lands where it is planted. Yet more prophetic are the 
mission schools with more than a million pupils, one third of 
them in advanced studies preparing for wide influence in society 
and the Church. Consider also the one hundred and sixty 
mission presses, issuing a vast volume of Christian literature in 
many tongues. The century began with perhaps forty versions, 
some almost obsolete, of the Bible open for one fifth of the race ; 
it closed with four hundred and fifty — a gift of pentecostal 
tongues to four fifths of the race. Finally, contrast the income 
of perhaps $75,000 or $80,000 in all missionary treasuries at the 
beginning of the century, with the income of over $19,000,000 at 
the close of the century, with perhaps $2,000,000 contributed by 
the native churches themselves! Such is the progress of Chris- 
tian missions during the last century. 

And what besides does all this imply? It implies, first, in the 



24 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

missionary body a courage, a faith, and a self-sacrifice that are 
matched only by these qualities as they existed in the early 
Church. We name Livingstone and Mackay and Melville Cox 
in Africa. We name Judson and Carey and our noble Parker in 
India. We name Morrison and his colaborers in the vast empire 
of China. We thank God that the spirit of the fathers and of the 
ancient Church survives in this later age, and in missionary saints 
and heroes innumerable. 

And more than this is the fact that the home Church, beginning 
the century with indifference or slight conviction touching its 
missionary duty and missionary possibilities, has been gradually 
rising to the high thought and spirit of its Lord. Every consid- 
erable body of Christian men thrills with the conviction that it is 
called to share the love and the labors of the world's Redeemer. 
In these churches our young people also are being trained to the 
love and service of missions, in the Sunday school, in the Epworth 
League, and in the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign 
Missions — a movement full of presage for higher success in the 
future that lies immediately before us. Evidently we are not 
fighting a losing battle. 
A. Missionary Second. Such is the missionary history of the nineteenth cen- 
Present tury. But it introduces us to a missionary present of vastly 

greater moment. The new century opens with hopefulness, but 
also with very great solicitudes and anxieties. Some there are, 
indeed, who speak of a "Crisis in Missions," and some of a 
"Pause in Missions," as if retreat might follow — phrases which 
I cannot accept as setting forth the truth in the case. Neverthe- 
less, the wise men of Christendom are oppressed by the new 
conditions of missionary life and work which are upon us. I 
cannot stop to enumerate these conditions at length, as they will 
be spoken of by others after me. Let me remind you, however, 
first, that our very successes trouble us. We touched heathenism, 
formerly, at a few points of a small circumference; to-day we 
touch it at every point of a vast circumference, and we need men 
and money and spiritual power vastly beyond our present 
resources in order to do the work imperatively called for by these 
successes. I remind you, in the second place, that God's provi- 
dence now calls us with a trumpet tongue. He opens the nations ; 
he brings them to our door. Some of us can remember when 
Japan was closed utterly to Western civilization, when Korea 



THE PURPOSE OF THE CONVENTION 25 

was a hermit nation, and China opened only at the five treaty 
ports ; when in India the presence of the Gospel was resisted both 
by an almost unbroken Hinduism and also by British officialism ; 
when Africa was a dark and unexplored continent; when no 
Bible could be sold in Rome, and the Inquisition still lingered in 
Spain; when Central and South America were forbidden ground 
for the evangelical faith. Such things we remember. But how 
changed ! The open world for which we prayed has come. The 
Church may enter freely all continents and empires and fill them 
with the glad tidings of salvation through Jesus Christ ! 

Then, let it be remembered that, though the Church has done what 
great things for the kingdom, there confront it still enormous and ^ e ^ ains t0 be 
almost undiminished forces of evil in all heathen lands. Consoli- 
dated systems of superstition and idolatry, rooted deeply in the 
hereditary thoughts, affections, and habits of great people, cannot 
be overthrown save by labors, heroisms, and sacrifices such as the 
Church has never yet as a whole exhibited. Its victories, though 
real and prophetic, are but slight beginnings, We have had our 
Fort Donelsons and Fort Henrys, and our skirmishes in West 
Virginia; but there are before us New Orleans and Vicksburg 
and Gettysburg and Chickamauga and the battles of the Wilder- 
ness. The great things yet remain to be done. 

In addition to these gigantic systems of false religions con- 
fronting us, we must consider the godless actions of so-called 
Christian nations in the presence of heathenism, their indefensible 
wars, their injustice and cruelty, their territorial greed. We 
must consider the sins and vices of men who go from Christian 
lands, representatives of Christianity, as heathen people must of 
necessity hold them. Here are obstacles to our work which may 
well awaken apprehension and indignation. 

When we turn to study our home conditions we are oppressed The Church's 
by the weakness of the missionary spirit in the churches. Take Glfts 
into account this: the wealth of the United States, it is said, 
doubled from 1800 to 1850; doubled again in 1875; doubled 
again in 1890; doubled again by the year 1900; and of all this 
vast increase of wealth a fair proportion must be in the hands of 
the Christian Church to-day. And yet, if we take the Methodist 
Church as a fair instance, we find that at the end of the first 
twenty years of our missionary work we gave an average of 
nineteen cents a member for missions; then for another twenty 



26 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

years we gave twenty-six cents, then for similar periods, thirty- 
seven cents, and forty-six cents. We do not forget the gifts 
of the Church in other directions, but please to remember that 
when you multiply wealth largely you have easily provided com- 
fortable conditions of life, and that then a vast surplus is at your 
command for high and great purposes. And, alas for it! what 
have we been doing? I will not dwell upon it. Last fall the 
General Missionary Committee met, and, notwithstanding our 
marvelous prosperity, was obliged to strike off eight per cent 
from our appropriations to all fields — so insufficient were our 
gifts. 

Take yet another fact: I think that for fifteen years past we 
have not reared one considerable building in all India by any 
gifts through our Missionary Society; and throughout all the 
world the call for accommodations in which Christian work is to 
be done is scarcely begun to be met by the gifts of the Church. 
Such considerations as these fill us with grave anxieties. How, 
with such a defective Church, can the world be saved ? How can 
the Church itself be saved ? 

We are here to-day to confront these solemn questions, these 
tremendous obligations, and to prepare ourselves, and, so far as 
we may, to prepare the Church for conquests and consecrations 
more truly proportioned to our resources, to the world's need, to 
the purpose of our Lord. 

Third. This brings me now to a very brief statement of the 
things we here seek. 
A Vision In the first place, we and the whole Church need a clear appre- 

hension, an inspiring vision of Christ's unwavering purpose in 
behalf of this world. We need to understand, as we have not yet 
understood, that he has taken it upon his heart and in his hands 
to redeem all this race of which we are a part; that he will not 
cease till he has set judgment in the earth ; that all the movements 
of his providence as well as all the inspirations of his grace are 
ordered that this world might be filled with the knowledge of him- 
self and of his gracious salvation; and that he summons every 
Christian man and Christian woman to take part with him in this 
vast enterprise. This divine plan we accept as part of our creed ; 
we affirm and reaffirm it ; but alas for the dullness and ineffective- 
ness of our apprehension! 

In the next place, we and our Church ought to attain a clearer 



Needed 



THE PURPOSE OF THE CONVENTION 2J 

and more impressive understanding of the actual condition of The World's 
this world and of its missionary needs. We ought to realize that Need 
the only really valuable gift we can bestow upon our fellow-men 
who are sunk in the darkness of heathenism and in the barbarities 
of savage life, the one ennobling thing we can give them, is not 
our commerce, is not our modern science and culture, is not our 
ideal of civil liberty and free government. These are futile gifts 
unless some higher thing be given. What the world needs is that 
inward life of God in the soul which, transforming human nature, 
makes it fit for all achievements in every realm of thought and of 
action. We must feel that a great and suffering world stands at 
our door seeking help, and above all things Christian help. The 
modern missionary movement is, in part, the answer to this ap- 
peal. We ought to be thoroughly accordant with, and partners 
in, this new life of Christianity. My brethren, we have some little 
notion of what is going on throughout the heathen world under 
Christian missionary influences. But how narrow is the informa- 
tion of ourselves and of the Church at large concerning the fields, 
the workers, and the work ! How scanty the knowledge, even of 
intelligent men, touching the aggressions of Christianity upon 
heathenism ! Can you tell me how many of the influential mem- 
bers so use Church periodicals that they are even tolerably 
informed upon these great topics ? We are eager to learn political 
news, eager to study financial movements. Who are eager to 
enter into the divine movement for the redemption of humanity? 

This Convention, therefore, aims to bring ourselves into a clear 
understanding of the divine movement among men, and thereby 
to lead our people everywhere into such a study of Christianity 
and of Christian missions as shall result in their hearty coopera- 
tion therewith. 

But, in the next place, knowledge concerning Christ's pur- The Mind of 
poses, or the world's need and possibility, is not of itself sufficient. 
We need, and the Church needs, the mind of Christ. We must 
pass from the region of mere knowledge and thought into the 
experience of that divine love which opened the skies and brought 
our Lord Jesus Christ from the excellent glory of heaven down 
to the humiliations and labors and pain of his earthly career, that 
he might lift us up to God. My brother, do you believe it pos- 
sible for a divine grace so to move upon the profound depths of 
our nature that the selfishness natural to us shall be suppressed 



Christ 



28 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

and banished, and that the mighty love of Christ toward men 
shall occupy and inspire us? Is it possible that you and I can 
pass into the spiritual condition which is represented by the great 
apostle to the Gentiles, who said: "I say the truth in Christ, I 
lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, 
that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. 
For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my 
brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh" ? Is it possible that 
this great missionary spirit may come to the Church, come to you 
and to me, and thus fit us for that great achievement to which the 
Master summons us ? Only by such love can we conquer. 
An Exalted Finally, shall we here find the exalted faith that ventures all 

Faith things, that undertakes great tasks, that dares difficulty and 

danger and sacrifice and death itself? We have come not to 
deliberate concerning missionary policies at large, not to order 
the legislation of the Church for missionary ends. We have come 
primarily that we, and the Church through us, may become 
thoroughly imbued with the missionary spirit, and able to enter 
into these larger enterprises without which the Gospel will not 
be effectual in the world. 

And may the great Head of the Church, in this hour and hence- 
forth through the coming days of our meeting, be with us, en- 
abling us to live in continual prayerfulness ; enabling us to 
banish, as far as may be, all other considerations but those con- 
nected with this great enterprise ; enabling us to forget our own 
burdened and indebted churches at home that we may enter on 
the larger thought of a world needing Christ; enabling us to 
waive aside questions of national policy and of Church consti- 
tution and general work, that we may study a world needing the 
Gospel, a Christ commissioning us to it, and a grace that can 
make us equal to our Christlike task. And thus this Convention, 
so happily inaugurated, will result in an enlargement of spiritual 
life and power such as perhaps we have never expected. 



THE EMERGENCY 29 

THE EMERGENCY 

The Rev. A. B. Leonard, LL.D. 

The word "emergency" is defined as "a sudden or unexpected what an 
occurrence or condition calling for immediate action ; a perplex- Emer S enc y Is 
ing or pressing combination of circumstances." To me the emer- 
gency is not "unexpected;" indeed, we have seen the conditions 
out of which it has arisen slowly gathering for years, but the 
situation has suddenly become so serious as to demand "immediate 
action." That it is "perplexing" and "pressing" no one who is 
even partially informed will doubt for a moment. 

An emergency may arise either in defeat or in victory. A 
man may find himself so embarrassed as to be unable to carry on 
his business, and in order to save anything from the wreck be 
compelled to declare himself a bankrupt. Or, he may be so for- 
tunate as to be able to secure the money necessary to tide him 
over the crisis and land him not only beyond danger, but where 
great success is assured. In either case an important emergency 
is met and the best possible results achieved. 

When Moscow was set on fire in 18 12 Napoleon's generals 
were not able to meet the emergency, and the result was that 
thousands of French soldiers, driven from the city, were wrapped 
in winding sheets of snow upon the steppes of Russia. Welling- 
ton was equal to the emergency at Waterloo, and won one of the 
most important victories of military annals, and for England a 
prestige among the nations of Europe which she has held to this 
day. General Lee was equal to the emergency which confronted 
him at Gettysburg in July, 1863, and succeeded in getting his 
broken and defeated army off the field of carnage and across the 
Potomac. General Meade was not equal to the emergency. A few 
thousand fresh troops would have enabled him to pursue Lee's 
army, capture it, and so to have ended the war that dragged on 
for two more bloody years. 

Our emergency is not the result of defeat, but of glorious vie- The 

tory. We have never abandoned a field where our banner has Embarrags- 

J ment of 

been unfurled. No missionary society on the planet can show Success 

greater success in the same period than ours. In the United 

States this society has pioneered the way from the Mississippi to 

the Pacific, and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and the Rio 



Home 



30 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

Grande, making possible the splendid results that have been 
achieved, while in Mexico, South America, Europe, southern 
and eastern Asia, and Africa the Methodist Episcopal Church has 
been successfully founded. But notwithstanding our great suc- 
cess the emergency now upon us, at home and abroad, is fraught 
with imminent peril. If we fail to meet it far-reaching disaster 
will certainly ensue. Not that our missions will be destroyed 
utterly, but that important posts now held will of necessity be 
abandoned, and aggressiveness greatly paralyzed. I beg you 
not to suppose that a false alarm is being sounded to frighten 
our Church into a spasm of generous giving. The crisis is here. 
It must be met. And beyond this crisis there must be enlarged 
and sustained benevolent, self-sacrificing giving of life and 
money, to achieve that rapid evangelization of the world possible 
within the first half of the present century. 
Results at Clearly to understand the present situation, a glance at what 

has already been accomplished seems to be necessary. In this 
survey the home field cannot be overlooked. We are now sustain- 
ing missionary work in sixty-six English-speaking Annual 
Conferences and nine Mission Conferences and Missions. There 
are sixteen foreign-speaking Annual Conferences. Our mis- 
sionaries are preaching the Gospel every week in fourteen 
languages, as follows : English, German, Swedish, Norwegian, 
Danish, Finnish, French, Spanish, Bohemian, Hungarian, 
Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, and Japanese, besides several 
American Indian dialects. In our domestic field we have about 
4,000 missionaries. While there is great need of more money 
for our missions in the rural districts, our greatest need is in our 
cities. They are storm centers now, and unless properly cared 
for may become centers of anarchy and revolution in the not 
distant future. Here the emergency is acute, and must be met 
if Protestant Christianity is to continue its supremacy. The 
Methodist Episcopal Church must do its full share in protecting 
America against infidelity, materialism, agnosticism, atheism, 
and Romanism. Let no one underestimate our peril from these 
sources. Here, however, our vantage ground is all that we can 
desire. With our more than 16,000 ministers, nearly 3,000,000 
members, all in close touch with the evils to be combated, there 
ought to be no doubt of continued and triumphant success. But 
in order to make this success certain it is absolutely necessary 



THE EMERGENCY 3 1 

that larger sums of money shall be at the disposal of the Mission- 
ary Society. 

Turning to our great foreign field, it may be said that few of Extent of Our 
our people have any conception of its vast extent. When Dr. S re ! gn 
Durbin became corresponding secretary in 1852, just half a 
century ago, our foreign missions were Liberia, Buenos Ayres 
in South America, Foochow in China (where at the date named 
there was not a convert), and a beginning in Germany. The 
entire membership in our foreign work reported in the year 
named was 1,320. Now we are strongly intrenched in many 
countries, and our entire foreign membership is more than 
208,000. To be more specific, we have in 

aiSSL coKL «b— *«.b«hip 

Africa 1 2 .. 4,000 

South America 2 .. .. 5,000 

China 221 25,000 

Southern Asia, including the Philip- 
pine Islands 6 1 . . 100,000 

Bulgaria .. 1 .. 300 

Italy 1 .. .. 2,354 

Mexico 1 .. .. 5,549 

Japan I I .. 6,000 

Korea . . . . 1 4,000 

Germany and Switzerland 3 . . . . 28,000 

Scandinavia 2 I .. 27,000 

Finland, in the empire of Russia. ... . . . . 1 1,000 

Total 19 8 3 208,203 

For about fifteen years we have had but little money to apply Need for 
to the acquisition of property, or to repair property already Equipment 
owned. The result is that our work is inadequately housed, and 
in many instances poorly equipped. If we are to continue 
aggressive movements we need and should have, for home and 
foreign work, for support of missionaries, needed repair, churches 
and chapels, parsonages, hospital buildings, orphanages, school- 
houses, and printing establishments, estimated on a very 
conservative basis, $1,000,000, as follows: 

Christian and Nominally Christian Countries. 

Home Missions $60,000 

South America $40,000 

Western South America 30,000 

Total for South America 70,000 

Mexico 50,000 

Bulgaria 10,000 

Italy 75,000 

Germany and Switzerland ■» ■ 60,000 



32 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

Scandinavia $50,000 

Finland 10,000 

Total for Christian and nominally Christian countries $385,000 

Pagan Countries. 

Liberia . $20,000 

East Central Africa 22,000 

West Central Africa 18,000 

Total for Africa $60,000 

Foochow $30,000 

Hinghua «, 15,000 

Central China 50,000 

West China 20,000 

North China 50,000 

Total for China 165,000 

North India $30,000 

Northwest India 30,000 

Bombay 50,000 

South India 50,000 

Bengal 25,000 

Burma 25,000 

Malaysia 30,000 

Philippine Islands 50,000 

Total for Southern Asia 290,000 

Japan „ $40,000 

South Japan 30,000 

Total for Japan 70,000 

Korea 30,000 

Total for pagan countries $615,000 

Total for Christian and nominally Christian countries 385,000 

Grand total $1,000,000 

Need for It now remains for me to call your attention to that feature of 

Reinforce- ^ emer g enC y we must meet which imperatively demands the 
presence on the field of a largely increased force of missionaries. 
For many years we have been compelled to keep the missionary 
force at the minimum, sending out barely a sufficient number to 
make good losses sustained by recalls, health failures, and deaths. 
The result is that many of our missions are undermanned, and are 
approaching the time when by reason of age and infirmity the 
number will be greatly decreased. Unless reinforcements are 
sent out promptly there will soon be a break in our ranks that 
will be disastrous. New men should be now on the ground 
becoming acclimated and learning the languages of the people, 
that they may be prepared when the responsibility of leadership 
devolves upon them. While our policy is to depend largely upon 
native preachers for evangelistic work, we must have competent 



THE EMERGENCY 33 

missionaries to instruct and lead the natives, as also to properly 
provide for our schools of the higher grades. The men now at 
the front are overburdened, and unless relief is quickly afforded 
some of them will be compelled to surrender and return home. 
Do you ask how many missionaries are imperatively needed? I 
answer, that on most of the fields the number should be at once 
doubled. This is true of southern Asia, including the Philippine 
Islands ; eastern Asia, including China, Japan, and Korea ; and 
Africa, while the needs of South America, Mexico, and Italy are 
scarcely less emergent. 

I am deeply impressed with the fact that neither our preachers A Eeal 
nor our people are at all aware of the magnitude of the emergency Emer £ enc y 
that is upon us, or of the consequences that will follow if that 
emergency is not promptly met. I am saying nothing for 
rhetorical effect. I am talking to you out of a full knowledge of 
the situation, and out of a heart oppressed and burdened beyond 
what mere words can express. That our Methodist Episcopal 
Church is able promptly to furnish the missionaries and the 
money, I have no doubt. And I am not without hope. The can- 
didates, men and women, are waiting. Only the money is want- 
ing. The $1,000,000 for which I plead could be secured in one 
day if our preachers and people were fully aroused. Only about 
thirty-three cents a member is needed. 

Will not this Convention appoint a committee that shall report 
a plan for adoption by which the money can be secured? A call 
by this great Convention, made up of ministers an</ laymen, will 
be heard throughout all our borders, and our people will respond. 
The question has often been asked, What is the Convention for? 
The answer is, to provide ways and means for the more rapid 
evangelization of the world. We cannot justify our coming 
together without planning to solve the problem that confronts us. 
God in his providence has prepared the way. Isaiah's prophecy 
has been fulfilled: "Every valley shall be exalted, and every 
mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be 
made straight, and the rough places plain : And the glory of the 
Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together : for the 
mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." 

The world is explored ; we know where its peoples dwell. The A World 
means for rapid transit by land and sea are provided. Steamships occ^mtion 
sail all the seas, while 600,000 miles of railroad thread the con- 
3 



34 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

tinents. A journey around the world can be made in fifty days, 
and soon the time will be reduced to thirty days. Even now, any 
uncivilized people on the face of the earth can be reached from 
some Christian country within the short space of thirty days. 
The press diffuses information more rapidly and widely than ever 
before. The Bible is now printed in the languages of 1,200,000,- 
000 people. The hand press of a century ago that could turn off 
1,000 impressions an hour is supplanted by the steam-power press 
that prints, binds, and folds 100,000 impressions an hour. A 
network of telegraph lines covers all countries, while 170,000 
miles of submarine cable connects all the continents and many of 
the larger islands of the globe. In one thing the human race has 
practically attained perfection, namely, in the transmission of 
news, for we now transmit news around the world instanta- 
neously. It would seem that in the not distant future the 
prophetic vision may be realized : "And it shall come to pass in 
the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be 
established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted 
above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many 
people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain 
of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob ; and he will teach 
us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths : for out of Zion shall 
go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 
And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many 
people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and 
their spears into pruning-hooks : nation shall not lift up sword 
against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." (Isa. 
ii, 2-4.) 

Our opportunity is great. Our ability is great. Our responsi- 
bility is great. And our success, under the blessing of God, will 
be correspondingly great, if we prove to be equal to the times in 
which we live. 



NINETEENTH CENTURY METHODIST MISSIONS 35 



METHODIST MISSIONS OF THE NINE- 
TEENTH CENTURY 

The Rev. J. M. Buckley, D.D. 

It has been decided by the highest court that what a man does 
by proxy he does himself. And as all the mighty works which have 
been described by the preceding speaker have been accomplished 
by the wise expenditure of the gifts of the Church, instead of 
saying, "Mr. President and Fellow Citizens," I prefer to say, 
"Mr. President and Fellow Missionaries." 

The topic excludes the century before the last, and this cen- Methodist 
tury; it is "Methodist Missions of the Nineteenth Century." It JESSi" 14 
may reasonably be inferred that such a topic could be best treated Missions 
by emphasizing the least known, if important, without scorning 
the familiar, if pertinent. It is the opinion of some that enthu- 
siasm — permanent, well-sustained enthusiasm — is most efficiently 
promoted by concentration of the mind upon one's own country, 
party, or ecclesiastical communion. But there are those who 
think that on the very threshold of the contemplation of one's 
responsibility and the enumeration of his achievements it might 
be prudent to pause and reflect for a moment that Methodism is 
not all of Christianity; that the salvation of the world does not 
depend exclusively upon what Methodists may do, nor is its 
damnation certain to follow if they neglect what they ought to do. 
While "Methodist Missions" is a noble theme, "Christian Mis- 
sions" is the more comprehensive phrase. Art is long, but it is 
not so long, so broad, so deep, or so high as the plans of God; 
and He who said of his Son, "He shall see of the travail of his soul 
and shall be satisfied," certainly justifies us in the opinion that, 
while we are required to do all that we can do, glorious results 
are sure. The vital question for us is to consider whether we 
shall have a part in producing them. For if there be woe unto 
the man by whom offenses come there must be joy everlasting 
to those who antidote offenses and introduce spiritual graces. 

It is said by some that from the first Methodism was a mission- John Wesley 
ary society. Those who say this fail to discriminate between the 
missionary spirit and a missionary institution. An eloquent 
orator of our Church, now deceased, observed, "Long before the 
American Board was founded in 1810, a celebrated Methodist 



$6 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

missionary by the name of John Wesley sailed in General Ogle- 
thorpe's ship to Georgia on a mission to the Indians." But John 
Wesley then knew little more of Methodism than the most super- 
stitious ecclesiastic in the heart of the Roman Catholic Church. 
Because he had reduced asceticism to its most inhuman forms and 
had expanded sacerdotalism to its most arrogant claims, and 
also because he had adopted a legalism which required him to 
forge iron rules and methods which not only bounded his activity 
but bound him, John W^esley was called a Methodist in dis- 
paragement. Not until some years after he had failed in Georgia 
did he come to understand fully the Methodism with which his 
name is inseparably connected. 

Others take the ground that in the proper sense of the word 
our fathers were missionaries when they preached to the Indians, 
and when they went to and fro through this country, seeking to 
save all whom they met or found. This was the tremendous zeal 
of propagandism. Not received by other denominations, Meth- 
odists must make conversions or as a body die. They did 
what every evangelical Church always does when fervor rises 
to the boiling point. "Methodist missions" signify what Metho- 
dism did when it came to realize that its ordinary itinerant spread- 
ing of the Gospel was not enough ; when it looked beyond the 
limits of anything that could possibly react upon it. Then it was 
that the genuine spirit of foreign missions appeared. 

There is much extraordinary information, well gathered and 
collated, in the handbook which has been prepared by this com- 
mittee. I have read it with care more than once; I see noth- 
ing to condemn and everything to praise, and think that the com- 
mittee deserves the thanks of the Convention and of the Church. 
You will find therein the exact order of development of all our 
foreign missions, their location, and approximately a tabulation of 
their results and condition. 

But we are not even all of Methodism; and therefore I have 
introduced into this handbook something which the committee 
was not obliged to include. 
The Wesleyan I wish you to see what our Wesleyan Methodists did on the 
other side. I wish to pay them a proper tribute before taking 
up our special work. In 1786 Thomas Coke published a pros- 
pectus for "A Mission in Asia," and in 1791 efforts were made in 
France. In 1796 he sent out a few mechanics and farmers to 



Methodists 



NINETEENTH CENTURY METHODIST MISSIONS $7 

Africa, but no missionary was sent with them. In 1811 the Wes- 
leyans sent a missionary to Sierra Leone. December 30, 1813, 
Coke sailed on his wonderful enterprise to Asia, and in 1814 they 
sent another missionary to southern Africa, and in 181 5 another 
to Australia; besides these they had flourishing missions in the 
West Indies, including some islands not belonging to Great 
Britain; so that when they formed their society in 1818 they 
had missions in all parts of the globe. Six years before this the 
Methodist Missionary Society for the Leeds District had been 
formed. Very soon after the Methodist New Connection seceded 
from the Wesleyan Methodist Church it established the Methodist 
New Connection Missionary Society; they founded it in 1824. 
First it was limited to work within the British dominions. In 
1859 it was extended to the heathen in China. Soon there arose 
half a dozen small denominations of Methodists in England; 
these associated themselves under the name of the United Meth- 
odist Free Church, and in 1837 they formed their missionary 
society, and gave it a most excellent name : "The Home and 
Foreign Missionary Society of the United Methodist Free 
Church." Their work is in Australia, New Zealand, and East 
Africa, and also in China. 

The Primitive Methodist Church established its missionary other 
society in 1843, extended it to the heathen in Africa in 1869, and 
also sent some missionaries to Australia. 

The Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
South, was organized in 1844, immediately after the bisection of 
the Church. Their highly successful missions in China were be- 
gun in 1848 ; there they were not behind us, in any proper sense of 
the word. Also, as soon as the doors were open, they entered 
Japan. Their missions to the North American Indians and their 
missions in Mexico and Brazil are of the highest credit to them. 

The Board of Missions of the Methodist Protestant Church 
was not established until 1870; they have one foreign mission, 
and that is in China. 

We should not turn scornfully away from the Home and 
Foreign Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal 
Church. Their missions are in Africa, in Hayti, in San Domingo, 
and in Indian Territory. 

The Missionary Society of the Methodist Church in Canada 
did not take up foreign mission work until 1872, because of the 



Methodist 
Bodies 



38 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Formation 
of the 
Missionary 
Society 



immense concentration of their powers upon most successful mis- 
sions to the Indians in their vast territory, as large as, and indeed 
much larger than, the habitable parts of the United States, ex- 
clusive of Alaska. They pay much attention to immigrant Chi- 
nese, and their foreign work includes Japan, China, Newfound- 
land, and Bermuda. 

Having cleared the way for an impartial survey of our own 
work, I desire to introduce you, if possible, into the formation of 
our society. There was a young merchant in the city of New 
York by the name of G. P. Disosway, who said to Dr. Bangs, 
"Why don't we form a missionary society like that of the Baptist 
Union and that of the American Board? Why don't we do it, 
and why don't we do it at once? I have some of the Lord's 
money for the society as soon as it is formed." Nathan Bangs 
had had the general thought, but it was not concentrated upon 
any date for initiation. He immediately considered this communi- 
cation to have been divinely suggested, and began to speak with 
others upon the subject. At this time New York city was a 
circuit, and once a week the superintendent met all the preachers 
of the circuit — which was the origin of the Preachers' Meeting. 
The editors and all the officers of the Church attended this meet- 
ing, also ministers who happened to visit the city. In 1819 Laban 
Clark, who afterward had so much to do with the foundation of 
Wesleyan University, arose in this meeting and moved the organi- 
zation of a society. On that occasion were present Freeborn 
Garrettson, Joshua Soule, and Nathan Bangs. Garrettson was 
growing old; Clark was quite young. Soule was perhaps more 
influential then than any other Methodist in New York or vicinity, 
except Nathan Bangs. He supported Clark's motion, and a com- 
mittee was appointed of Clark, Bangs, and Soule; they were re- 
quested to report at a meeting of all the members of the Church 
in the city of New York. This meeting was held on the 5th of 
April, 1819. Immediately there arose a discussion, first, upon 
the proposed title, which was this: "Missionary and Bible So- 
ciety of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America." 

The American Bible Society had been established, and its 
friends thought that the word "Bible" should be stricken out, and 
that Methodists should cooperate with that society — a proper view 
of the case. However, at that time they were overcome, and the 
name was adopted. 



NINETEENTH CENTURY METHODIST MISSIONS 39 

It was believed by some that in a little while there would be a How Mission 
tendency to undertake foreign missions, and a large part of those Work started 
present, and many of our members not present, opposed this on 
the ground that it was enough for us to hope to evangelize the 
continent of North America, which, generally speaking, was at 
that time in a wild and uncivilized condition. But the society 
was formed. The exciting cause of the starting of regular mis- 
sionary work about that time rather than before or after was the 
notable success of Marcus Lindsay, between 1816 and 1819, in 
preaching to the American Indians. At this meeting a board of 
managers was elected, consisting of the most influential laymen 
of the city. The senior bishop, McKendree, was made president ; 
Bishops George and Roberts, respectively, first and second vice 
president; Nathan Bangs, third vice president; Thomas Mason, 
corresponding secretary; and Joshua Soule, treasurer. In the 
Methodist Library at New York the earlier reports are in manu- 
script. In consulting them on various occasions it has seemed 
quite easy to come into communion with the spirit of the founders. 

The first report is preceded by remarks respecting the circum- The First 
stances which led to the establishment of the society. "It had epor 
long been cause of regret that that ministry which had been so 
signally owned of God was not furnished with pecuniary means 
in proportion to the extensive field in which it seemed destined 
to move, as well as to enlarge the sphere of its usefulness in those 
places where it had commenced its operations. " Frequent failure 
of efforts to extend the Gospel to remote and destitute parts of 
this country are recounted, and if such extension was accom- 
plished at all it was under great embarrassment. It is recorded 
that the society was formed to extend itself "by means of auxiliary 
and branch societies throughout the United States, and to em- 
brace in the field of its labors every place, especially on our own 
continent, where the light of divine truth had not yet penetrated." 
But the ultimate design was to add, if possible, energy and exten- 
sion, so as to carry the light of evangelical religion "to every 
corner of our inhabited continent, whether Christian or savage; 
and to do this by means of an itinerant ministry." 

An account is given of the New York Female Missionary 
Bible Society, established in 1819, of the Young Men's Mission- 
ary and Bible Society, formed in the same year, and of several 
other societies on the plan provided in the constitution. 



40 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A Young 

Lad's 

Interest 



Character of 
the Society 



The second annual report states that after making some neces- 
sary alterations in the constitution the General Conference gave 
the society its unqualified approbation, recommended it to each 
Annual Conference, and requested the general superintendents 
to use their influence to secure the forming of auxiliary and 
branch societies, the list of which showed rapid growth. They 
note that "a cry had come from the far-away country beyond the 
Alleghanies ;" they praised God for the peace and amity existing 
between the Indian tribes — "the tomahawk is buried, the hostile 
arrow has fallen neglected from the bow of destruction." An- 
other figure of speech requires a profounder knowledge than I 
possess of the capacities of the English language to explain. It 
is this : "The escutcheon has ceased to scatter terrors on the field 
of death. At our approach the red men rise up and call us 
brothers." 

One passage in the third report is of unusual revealing power. 
It is this : "Washington Cockle (a lad about twelve years of age) 
presented the president with a donation of $400, the proceeds of 
collections taken up in the course of the year past at the monthly 
sermons for the benefit of the Missionary Society preached to the 
children in the several Methodist churches in the city of New 
York. He also addressed the meeting in a very moving manner 
on missionary subjects." 

When this youth of twelve had made his well-prepared speech, 
who do you suppose it was that seconded the motion? A man 
whose name and fame, for the gift of the most felicitous elo- 
quence, will never die either in Europe or America — John Sum- 
merfield. He seconded the motion of Washington Cockle that the 
report should be printed, and urged that great efforts should be 
made to increase the funds. It is to be hoped that the extreme 
youth of Master Cockle will not justify hereafter any bringing 
forward of infants in missionary meetings. The youth was not 
inspired. He did not present a speech upon any and every subject, 
without previous study. It was all arranged, and the manuscript 
of his little speech is said to be preserved in New York up to this 
date. 

When the fourth annual report was prepared nineteen mission- 
aries were recognized, most of whom were directly under the 
patronage of the society. Among them were the Rev. James B. 
Finley and Charles Elliot, afterward so noted. The report em- 



Methodists 



NINETEENTH CENTURY METHODIST MISSIONS 41 

phasizes the universality of the character of the society. It knows 
no geographical lines, it gives no preference to color, to nation, 
or country. It is limited only by its means. Its primary inten- 
tion is expressed in these comprehensive words, "To assist the 
several Annual Conferences to extend their missionary labors 
throughout the United States and elsewhere/' The receipts had 
reached nearly nine thousand dollars. 

At the fifth anniversary John Summerfield moved that this Wesleyan 
society heartily congratulate their European brethren on their 
success in spreading the Gospel by missionary exertions in Eu- 
rope, in the East and West Indies, in Africa, and in the isles of 
the South Seas. The report shows that the Wesleyan Methodists 
employed at that time no less than one hundred and fifty-nine 
missionaries, chiefly on foreign missions in Asia, Africa, West 
Indies, Nova Scotia, isles of the South Seas, and the States ; that 
they had planned a mission to the land of Palestine and sent two 
missionaries. 

In our Missionary Society work the missions to the Indians 
were most emphasized. 

The Rev. Thomas Mason was corresponding secretary in the 
fifth year. In the seventh year the Rev. John Emory, afterward 
bishop, became corresponding secretary, and held this position 
until he was elected bishop, when J. J. Matthias succeeded him, 
but only occupied the position for one year, when it was assumed 
by Beverly Waugh. He also was succeeded by the Rev. Samuel 
Luckey, who the next year was in turn succeeded by Beverly 
Waugh. 

In the ninth annual report work of the society was divided into 
(1) Missions among the aborigines; (2) Among the aborigines 
of Upper Canada; (3) Domestic Missions. 

At the eleventh anniversary the Rev. Professor Durbin, of 
Augusta College, Kentucky, moved that the report be adopted 
md printed, and the motion was seconded by Dr. Wilbur Fisk, 
of Wilbraham, Mass. Professor Durbin dwelt with much em- 
phasis and feeling on the spreading victories of the cross of Christ 
as exhibited in the success of missionary enterprise, and Dr. Fisk 
presented a series of calculations mathematically demonstrating 
the paucity of our means in comparison with what might be 
raised for the object if the missionary spirit were exhibited in 
the hearts of our Church members generally as it existed in the 



42 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A Speech by 
Dr. Bascom 



Foreign 
Missions 
Entered Upon 



Liberia 
Annual 
Conference 



vicinity of New York. Another man unequaled in power to 
draw congregations by either of these two wonderful orators, the 
peculiar, the mysterious, the somewhat equivocal Rev. John New- 
land Maffitt, spoke to the resolution, thanking the auxiliary socie- 
ties. The report represents that "under his tender, touching, and 
affectionate appeals the people were ready to give all they had to 
the cause of missions." The names of all subscribers and donors 
of amounts from twelve cents upward were printed in the report. 

At the twelfth annual meeting the famous Bascom appeared. 
Dr. Bangs thus describes his speech : "For vigor of thought, for 
affluence of language, for richness of imagery, for beauty of illus- 
tration, for soundness of argument, for cogency of reasoning, for 
extensiveness of range, for depth of learning and impressiveness 
of delivery" — after this would not one expect him to say that it 
was superior to any uninspired address since the creation? He 
does not say this, but affirms that "it was superior to anything we 
have heard for a long time" — Dr. Bangs was preeminently a safe 
man. 

In 1833 an advanced step was taken by the passage of this 
resolution : "That it is the duty of this society to extend its opera- 
tions more especially among the aborigines of our country, and 
also among foreign nations, particularly in the interior of Africa." 

At the next meeting a pall of sadness hung over the assembly 
on account of the death of the first foreign missionary in the 
proper sense of the word, the Rev. Melville B. Cox, who had 
sailed for Liberia November 6, 1832, and arrived there after four 
months. Some of his first communications to the board had given 
great reason to hope that he would meet with speedy and grati- 
fying success, but that hope was soon blasted by the mournful 
tidings of his death. Several other missionaries were sent out, 
and in less than a year they organized an Annual Conference 
consisting of thirteen members. The report represents the pros- 
pects as truly encouraging. Reports of domestic missions are 
minute. Seventy-three such missions are reported, and fourteen 
among the aborigines. In the list of domestic missions eighteen 
are to the blacks, South Carolina Conference alone having nine. 
At these missions there were two thousand six hundred and fifty- 
nine black members. Our brethren of Afro-American descent, 
and those of the Caucasian race as well, will find the words of 
the report on these missions to colored people unusually sug- 



NINETEENTH CENTURY METHODIST MISSIONS 43 

gestive : "These missions have hitherto commanded the respect 
and insured the patronage of the planters on whose plantations 
they are established, the planters being satisfied 'that their in- 
struction in the principles and doctrines of Christianity renders 
them both more worthy of confidence and more happy and con- 
tented with their allotments.' " In one part of Christianity, that 
which teaches us to "honor all men," they could not at that time 
have been fully instructed. It was chiefly the consolations of 
religion to men of low degree, and the hope of heaven. But 
another doctrine had already begun to work, which was destined 
to leaven the whole lump. 

The sixteenth anniversary was presided over by Bishop Hed- A Large 
ding. It was a great occasion. President Fisk, of Wesleyan Collection 
University, offered some important resolutions, and added to them 
an extemporaneous one recommending a mission to China. This 
he advocated in a most impressive and eloquent speech, and closed 
it by a proposition that a subscription be opened for it. This, it 
appears, was a plain subscription for one mission as distinguished 
from the rest. Dr. Fisk in this respect was a precursor of Bishop 
McCabe. Dr. Nathan Bangs, long the treasurer of the society, 
arose and said that one gentleman had offered to be one of ten 
to raise one thousand dollars, and immediately fourteen hundred 
and fifty dollars was subscribed. Great enthusiasm characterized 
that anniversary. The most impressive scene of the occasion 
took place about midnight: On the missionary platform Bishop 
Hedding, assisted by the Rev. John Seys, the Rev. Dr. Fisk, the 
Rev. Beverly Waugh, and others, ordained Beverly Wilson, a 
colored man, a member of the Liberia District Conference, to the 
office of elder. 

The report sent out by the corresponding secretary expresses Trans- _ 
doubt whether an "equal collection had been raised in any Church py'li^ct? 1 
in this or any other country." While the sixteenth anniversary 
was beclouded by the death of Bishop McKendree, the seventeenth 
took note of the death of Bishop Emory. But the gloom was 
illuminated by rays of light of utmost brilliancy. The Oregon 
Mission was expanding and flourishing at every point, and the 
corresponding secretary informed the Church that he was in- 
spired with the pleasing hope of seeing a line of missionary sta- 
tions established from the upper Mississippi over the Rocky 
Mountains to the Pacific Ocean; and he proposed another line 



44 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



South 
American 
Missions 
Established 



of aboriginal missions along the Northwestern, Western, and 
Southwestern States, from Michigan to Alabama and Georgia. 
He informed the Church that Alfred Brunson was planting the 
standard of the cross among the Winnebagos, who mingled with 
the Chippewas in the prairies of the upper Mississippi. He said 
that a prophet of the latter had forewarned them that the time 
had come for them to exchange the religion and customs of their 
fathers for those of the white people. The accounts from Liberia 
were also encouraging, but the establishment of the South 
America Mission was the event which created the greatest amount 
of jubilation. 

In 1832 the General Conference recommended the bishops and 
Missionary Society to establish missions in South America. The 
Rev. Fountain E. Pitts was appointed a missionary, and he set 
forth on his tour in July, 1835, exploring many points, and on 
his return recommended the establishment of missions at Buenos 
Ayres and Montevideo. The General Conference of 1836 by 
resolution requested Mr. Pitts to visit Cincinnati and report to 
them in person, which he did. In 1836 Justin Spaulding was ap- 
pointed missionary to Brazil and John Dempster to Buenos Ayres. 
Justin Spaulding sailed from New York on the twenty-second of 
the preceding March, and on the fourteenth of October John 
Dempster sailed for Buenos Ayres. 

For the first time the name of the Rev. George G. Cookman 
appears on an anniversary occasion. Dr. Fisk, who had before 
proposed the mission to China, now delivered a very eloquent 
speech in favor of establishing a mission in France. He urged 
this with great force because he had just been making a tour in 
that country. His appeal was so powerful that when the proposi- 
tion was submitted to raise five hundred dollars on the spot to 
begin the work fourteen hundred and seventy-four dollars was 
pledged, which, together with the sum collected, amounted to 
eighteen hundred and ten dollars and upward. Recognition of 
the fact that the Rev. John Dempster had sailed as a missionary 
to Buenos Ayres was made. The Philadelphia Conference, which 
had a society of its own, is recognized as a fellow-laborer in the 
grand work. The appeals sent out by Dr. Bangs bore no uncer- 
tain sound. Here is one sentence : "Millions of immortal beings 
are at this moment enveloped in all the darkness of pagan super- 
stition or led astray by the delusions of Mohammedan imposture 



NINETEENTH CENTURY METHODIST MISSIONS 45 

or buried beneath the rubbish of Roman Catholic mummeries and 
deceitful workings. Shall we — can we — be either idle or in- 
different while casting our eyes upon such a mass of moral 
corruption? No, indeed! Your full hearts respond 'No' with 
an emphasis which shall be heard and felt throughout all the 
ranks of our Israel — and the effects of which will yet be witnessed 
all along the line of our missionary operations, and even far be- 
yond, at no distant period, the places where the footsteps of the 
missionary have as yet marked the soil." 

In the nineteenth report some observations are made about the A Mission to 
mission in France, and it is stated that "the society was only propo^a 
waiting for a suitable opening of Providence in the way of suit- 
able instruments to cooperate with those who were there." It is 
waiting yet! At the twentieth anniversary Dr. John P. Durbin, 
then president of Dickinson College, addressed the assembly and 
moved that "the crowning glory of the nineteenth century is mis- 
sionary enterprise," which was unanimously carried by a rising 
vote. This meeting was made sad by the death of the famous 
Martin Ruter, who was in charge of the missions in Texas, also of 
the Rev. Samuel Merwin and Dr. Wilbur Fisk. 

"Nathan Bangs, Resident Corresponding Secretary," appears 
for the first time in the report of 1838. Prior to that time he had 
written every annual report of the society. He deserves to be 
considered the father of missionary work. 

The most important event in the history of the society took 
place April 9, 1839, which was the incorporation of the society by 
the State of New York. 

In the report of the twenty-first anniversary foreign missions 
had a chapter to themselves, but the German Mission in Cincin- 
nati is included among them, also the French Mission in the city 
of New York; and the report omits, what had characterized all 
preceding ones, the particular and detailed account of the domestic 
missions. By this time the Missionary Society had been so 
thoroughly established that its praise was in the mouths of all 
evangelical denominations. 

In the twenty-first year three corresponding secretaries were Three 
appointed : Nathan Bangs, who had been resident corresponding in "J respon " 
secretary for several years; William Capers, and Edward R. Secretaries 
Ames. 

The twenty-second anniversary was held in the Broadway 



46 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

Tabernacle, New York, Bishop Hedding presiding. An invita- 
tion had been sent to the Rev. Dr. Bunting, of London. The 
official document was sent by the Rev. George G. Cookman, in the 
steamship President, who was commissioned by the board to rep- 
resent the Missionary Society at the anniversary of the Wesleyan 
Missionary Society in London; and a letter was received from 
Dr. Bunting, who had been notified by the recording secretary, 
"I have delayed my answer for some time, hoping to receive the 
more official document. It is, however, on board of the President 
steamer, which has not yet been heard of and about which the 
most intense anxiety prevails in this country." It has never been 
heard of since, nor one trace of it found on sea or shore. It 
disappeared as though it had been a phantom ship upon a phantom 
ocean. 

When Dr. Bangs finally retired from the corresponding secre- 
taryship the New York Annual Conference had the power of 
filling vacancies. The subject was before that body and there 
seemed to be no unity of feeling. In this state of affairs the Rev. 
Charles Pitman, an eloquent and most effective preacher of the 
New Jersey Conference, entered the room, and as he did so there 
seemed to be an immediate concentration of all eyes upon him, 
and an almost universal sentiment in his favor at once spread 
through the body. He was elected to fill the vacancy until 1844, 
when he was elected by the General Conference, and reelected by 
the General Conference of 1848. 

The missions recognized by the twenty-third report are the 
Liberia, the Oregon, the South America, and the Texas. The 
German Missions occupy a very important place. The Indian 
Missions had been gradually declining. A defense is made of the 
situation : ' 'While they were suffered to remain in the States and 
Territories our missionaries loved to labor among them, and 
thousands have been elevated, nor have they been deserted in their 
exile beyond the Western waters, and the board most confidently 
believe that the Methodist Episcopal Church will never desert 
them so long as there is a vestige of their wasting tribes remain- 
ing." Alas for the feebleness of the fulfillment of that prophecy ! 

The Mission Until the mission in China was established Methodism had not 

to China 

a representative in all Asia. In April and May of 1835 the Mis- 
sionary Lyceum of Wesleyan University discussed the question, 
"What country now presents the most promising field for mission- 



NINETEENTH CENTURY METHODIST MISSIONS 47 

ary exertions?" The Chinese empire was warmly advocated. 
B. F. Tefft, D. P. Kidder, and E. Wentworth were appointed to 
prepare an address on the subject to the Church. This paper 
appeared in The Christian Advocate and Journal May 15, 1835, 
occupying three columns. Money was raised, but ten years 
elapsed before the work was begun. 

Having brought the society historically down to the year 1848, 
and tried to bring you into sympathy with its early struggles, 
experiments, and achievements, I shall now endeavor to elucidate 
the philosophy of foreign missions as related to the genius of 
American Methodism. 

By the time that American Methodism organized its Missionary 
Society, Protestant missions had begun to take on the form of a 
world movement, enthusiasm had reached its highest point, and 
novelty, eloquence, fervor, and the charm of news from foreign 
regions united to command attention. 

The press had not then made all classes more or less acquainted 
with regions previously unknown, or in gorgeous colors portrayed 
the yet unknown as imagined from a few particulars. 

The American spirit was just developing. Huge forms of un- 
measured magnitude danced before the eyes of pioneers, ex- 
plorers, money-makers, and founders of institutions. 

Wesleyan Methodism had already in a brief period accom- 
plished such results that its achievements were used to excite the 
spirit of emulation. The explosive and ever-restless forces of 
religious zeal could not be wholly confined by the limits of home 
churches and familiar localities. 

The relation of the Dark Continent to slavery made that America's 
naturally the first region to which missionary enthusiasm was ^ward 
directed. There was then a deep feeling that America owed much Africa 
to that continent. The germs of the colonization movement were 
in the air; the proposed republic of Liberia, from which was 
anticipated so much, intensified the interest. The death of Cox 
and other missionaries increased rather than diminished zeal and 
determination. 

For a while visions of extraordinary success, depicted with 
amazing eloquence, roused the people; afterward there came a 
depression, which was felt profoundly by those who endeavored 
to promote foreign missions. 

After the beginning of the mission in China it was morally 



4 8 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



India 



Japan 



Missions in 

Latin 

Countries 



certain that it could not be long before a mission would be estab- 
lished in India, for the progress of the British government in 
that country was a means of furnishing information, and also of 
guaranteeing protection to missionaries. The unspiritual though 
philosophical religion of Confucius had not so many attractions 
for the American mind at the time when those missions were 
established as had the accounts of the refined speculations of the 
Buddhists, and even the Hindus of India. 

Since then a change has occurred, and while mysticism still 
has its votaries, and apparently in increasing number, the com- 
bination of the positive philosophy and stoicism of Confucius is 
more and more interesting to the practical and the hard-headed 
class, and often the hard-hearted class, developed by the peculiar 
characteristics and influences of recent American life. 

When the veil was lifted from Japan, and that wonderful people 
caught glimpses of European and American civilization, it was as 
certain that American Methodism would send missionaries to 
Japan as that that country existed. The charm of possible entry 
into the hermit nation, Korea, between China and Japan, both of 
which were open, was like a beckoning hand and voice to the 
Church. A few months after Korea was opened the time came 
when an appeal was made, and this received a prompt response. 
So by a kind of logical connection, beginning with Africa, prac- 
tically the whole pagan world — excluding, of course, the scattered 
islands of the sea — has come to some extent under the influence 
of American Methodism. 

The rise of our missions in Catholic countries was quite simple. 
It was in the minds of the founders of the society, and in the very 
name that they gave, "The Missionary Society of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church in America." They spoke of the whole Amer- 
ican continent. Roman Catholicism they regarded as but little 
better than baptized paganism, and all that they had heard of 
the condition of the South American peoples had been confirmed 
by increasing knowledge. 

The difference between Roman Catholicism, now at its best in 
the United States, and Methodism in its most primitive state, is 
so radical that it is not extravagant to affirm that Roman Catholi- 
cism places serious and often insurmountable impediments in the 
way of reaching a simple Christian spiritual faith and genuine 
self-witnessing conversion. Intelligent Catholics will hardly deny 



NINETEENTH CENTURY METHODIST MISSIONS 49 

this, for they often praise themselves because of those very 
impediments, and at the same time characterize, and more 
frequently caricature, what they call Methodist conversions. It 
is rather a compliment to Methodists than otherwise that Roman 
Catholics characterize all forms of evangelical religion as 
"Methodism." 

Having early established missions in Texas, it was not wonder- Mexico 
ful when religious freedom under the strong hand of Diaz was 
guaranteed that we should found missions in Mexico, and the 
only reason that could be urged when Italy was thrown open to 
the world why we should not enter there was the immensity and 
need of our operations elsewhere. But who could resist the con- 
tagious influence which spread itself over the Protestant world 
when the temporal power of the pope was a thing of the past, and 
theoretically men could preach in Italy as freely as they can preach 
in the hamlets, the towns, and the cities of the United States? 
That influence was so pervasive and powerful that so calm a man 
as Bishop Janes predicted that at no distant date a General Con- 
ference of the Methodist Episcopal Church might be held in 
Rome. Annual Conferences indeed have been, but in the flight 
of time other visions of Methodism have taken possession of the 
more sagacious, and a General Conference of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church in Rome is hardly conceivable now. An Ecumenical 
Methodist Conference may yet be held there, and indeed should be 
within a few decades. It might marvelously increase the prestige 
of our yet struggling missions. 

Our entrance into the Greek Church in Bulgaria has been a Bulgaria 
sign of contention, but at the time when it was established the 
atmosphere was intoxicating. The "Sick Man" of Europe was 
supposed to be very near death; it was fancied that entrance 
might be made into Russia by means of Bulgaria; that there 
might be a spreading of evangelical truth through all the sur- 
rounding countries. 

The origin and history of German Methodism and the relation 
of the German people to the United States are our only and a 
sufficient vindication of the introduction of Methodism into that 
part of the world. 

Lutheranism is a form of Christianity for which the highest Methodism in 
respect must be felt. When evangelical its spirit and forms are Eur °P e 
almost beyond criticism. Yet at the time that Methodism entered 
4 



50 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

Germany a large proportion of the churches were dead, and many 
of them under the influence of pastors who doubted or denied the 
divine origin of Christianity. The evangelical spirit had disap- 
peared from most of the universities. Germans migrated to this 
country, came under the influence of Methodism, were converted, 
wrote and returned home, and often were denounced as apostates 
or fanatics. These charges were often erroneously made by pious 
pastors, while by those not religiously inclined Methodists were 
treated with contempt. This naturally led them to associate. It 
also developed fervor and an intense desire to lead their friends 
into the light. So many Methodist converts from this country 
revisited the Fatherland and so many Germans were nverted 
that the necessity for missionaries became as great as it was here 
when the early Methodists besought Wesley for aid. Soon a 
Mission Conference was formed, and later regular Conferences. 
Switzerland consists of cantons and half cantons, some exclusively 
French, some practically Italian, and many solidly German. 
Hence, and on the same principles, Methodism spread in that 
country. 
Scandinavia The rise and progress of Methodism in Scandinavia — first in 

Norway, then in Sweden, and finally in Denmark — was under 
similar influences. The State Churches of all these countries, as a 
whole, do not regard our entrance with favor. But many of their 
most distinguished representatives — as they have learned more 
of us — do not conceal their conviction that we reach many whom 
their churches do not reach, and that our presence and methods 
have led them to make some real improvements. 

At all events, wherever religious freedom is guaranteed, there 
we have the right to exist, and to use our own judgment when to 
enter any country. At the same time Christian comity and amity 
require us at home and abroad to abstain from trying to proselyte 
the living members of any living Church of Christ. Those who 
are dead in sin or groping in religious darkness are our lawful 
spoil. Also those who, after they have viewed us from afar, draw 
near, investigate, and of their own choice come to us should and 
will ever find an open door and an outstretched hand of welcome. 
The philosophy of our domestic missions rests on the same 
grounds as at the beginning. We distribute our offerings through 
the Conferences. Formerly all Conferences received what they 
needed ; but later the older Conferences relinquished their claims. 



NINETEENTH CENTURY METHODIST MISSIONS 5 1 

The Freedmen's Aid Society in its beginning was, and at the 
present time is, apart from its educational work, strictly mission- 
ary; though its detailed exposition here, for obvious reasons, 
would not naturally be expected. 

Two days after the formation of the Missionary Society, in Woman's 
1 8 19, a resolution was passed that "the females attached to the Missionary 
Methodist congregations be invited to form a society auxiliary Society 
to this." Much was done by women in the foreign missionary 
field, almost from the beginning. The Union Woman's Mission- 
ary Society was organized in i860, and in 1868 the Woman's 
Board of Missions auxiliary to the American Board. March 17, 
1869, tne l ate Missionary Bishop Parker addressed the corre- 
sponding secretaries at New York with regard to the formation 
of a Woman's Foreign Missionary Society. Approval being se- 
cured, on the 30th of March, 1869, the society was organized by 
Mrs. Parker and Mrs. William Butler. At the very moment of 
this organization Miss Isabella Thoburn, a sister of the bishop, 
was offering herself to the parent board. The marvelous success 
of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society is heard and read 
of all. 

At the close of the civil war the condition of the freed women 
of the Southern United States was seriously felt by many women, 
who urged the subject upon the attention of the Woman's Foreign 
Missionary Society, but after deliberation it was concluded that 
they would do better to restrict their work to foreign fields. 

In 1876 it was proposed to establish a society auxiliary to the Woman's 
Freedmen's Aid Society ; but this did not seem to be practicable, Missionary 
owing to the existing laws of the State of Ohio with respect to Society 
charters. It was therefore proposed to establish a Woman's 
Home Missionary Society, to do in this country work similar to 
that done abroad by the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society. 
The mother of Bishop Gilbert Haven gave the first contribution 
to the Woman's Home Missionary Society. The approval of the 
enterprise by the General Conference of 1880 led to the organiza- 
tion. The first meeting was called by Mrs. R. S. Rust, in June, 
1880. Its organization was speedily perfected, and its zeal and 
service have been such as to occasion wonder that the Church 
existed so long without it. 

The deaconess movement has proved an adjunct of much im- 
portance to domestic missions, as carried on in the Annual Con- 



52 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

ferences and in many unclassified ways. It rests upon the prac- 
tice of the early Church, of the modern renewal of it in Europe, 
the analogies to it in the Roman Catholic churches, and upon its 
own good works in Methodism, first in Germany, and now for 
fifteen or more years in this country. 
William And what shall I say of William Taylor? All that there was 

Taylor f m i ss i nary spirit in him was born of Methodism. The career 

of this wonderful man from its beginning to its close belongs to 
the spirit of Methodist missions. Whether he sang and preached 
in the streets of San Francisco, evangelized in Australia, told "the 
old, old story" to the Kaffirs in Africa, carried out the Pauline 
method in India (from which grew the great South India Con- 
ference), or established schools and colleges in South America, 
he was first, last, and always a Methodist evangelist, a true, 
spiritual descendant, on the one side, of the indomitable Wesley, 
and on the other, of the unresting Asbury. 

When in 1884 he received the miter which had been unused 
since the death of Missionary Bishop Roberts, and administered 
the affairs of Liberia under the Missionary Society, his work be- 
came identified therewith. And when all his schools and societies 
in South America, by the free and magnanimous action of the 
Transit and Building Fund Society, were turned over to us (as 
were also Bishop Taylor's stations in Africa outside of Liberia), 
his salary being paid by the Missionary Society, and his last years 
made comfortable by its material and fraternal ministrations, 
William Taylor's name became imperishably connected not only 
with the missionary spirit of Methodism, but with Methodist 
Missions in the Nineteenth Century! 

The work of the Missionary Society has been done by the 
bishops, ministers, and laymen constituting its Board of Mana- 
gers, by the pastors of the churches, by the secretaries and the 
treasurers of the society, by every man, woman, and child who has 
contributed to its funds, and by the missionaries supported by 
the gifts of the Church. 
John P. To Nathan Bangs, if to any one man, belongs the honorable 

name of Founder of the Missionary Society ; and to Charles Pit- 
man belongs the special honor of having been the first to thrill 
the Church at large with eloquent appeals. But in John P. Dur- 
bin the society had a representative worthy of comparison with 
any public servant of the Church in modern times. Great gifts 



Durbin 



NINETEENTH CENTURY METHODIST MISSIONS 53 

of oratory, learning, travel, an extraordinary aspect of simplicity, 
remarkable powers in the management of office business were all 
united in him. Such a combination of the oratorical temperament 
with a methodical mind has not been found elsewhere in Metho- 
dism since the death of John Wesley. 

The keynote of his administration was this : "The support of Secretaries 
missions is committed to the churches, congregations, and socie- Missionary 
ties as such." When Dr. Durbin accepted the position he made a Society 
condition that assistance should be granted him in the office. The 
Rev. David Terry, a New York city missionary, was selected for 
the purpose. He entered the office as recording secretary, and 
was reelected annually until 1883, when he finished his useful 
service of thirty-three years. William L. Harris was elected as- 
sistant corresponding secretary in i860, to reside in the West, 
but to labor under the direction of the board; but in 1864 it was 
the universal opinion that his services were greatly needed in New 
York. The General Conference accordingly elected two assistant 
corresponding secretaries, Dr. Harris for the office, and Dr. 
Joseph M. Trimble for the Western field. But the General Confer- 
ence of 1868 left Drs. Durbin and Harris at New York in charge 
of its entire work. In 1872 Dr. Durbin retired, and, Dr. Harris 
having been elected to the episcopacy, the General Conference 
elected three corresponding secretaries, Drs. Robert L. Dashiell, 
Thomas M. Eddy, and John M. Reid. On October 7, 1874, Dr. 
Eddy died. He had many of the elements of Durbin : method in 
the office, a high order of oratory on the platform, and ability to 
labor at the desk. Until 1876 Drs. Dashiell and Reid conducted 
the affairs of the society, and both were reelected, but before the 
sitting of the next General Conference Dr. Dashiell, under an 
agonizing disease which surgical operations failed to relieve or 
cure, had slowly sunk to the grave. At the General Conference 
of 1880 Dr. John M. Reid and Dr. Charles H. Fowler were 
elected. James N. FitzGerald was elected by the board recording 
secretary. In 1884, Dr. Fowler being elected bishop, Dr. John M. 
Reid and Dr. Charles C. McCabe were elected secretaries. In 
1888, on the retirement of Dr. Reid, Dr, McCabe was reelected, 
and Drs. J. O. Peck and A. B. Leonard were chosen secretaries. 
Dr. FitzGerald being elected bishop, Stephen L. Baldwin, D.D., 
was elected recording secretary. These secretaries were all 
reelected in 1892. 



54 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

In the spring of 1894 Dr. Peck, to the grief of the whole 
Church, was stricken unto death. In 1896 Dr. McCabe became 
bishop, and Drs. Leonard, Palmer, and Smith were elected corre- 
sponding secretaries. In 1900 the General Conference radically 
modified the constitution of the Missionary Society, providing 
for only one corresponding secretary and one assistant corre- 
sponding secretary. These offices were filled by Drs. A. B. 
Leonard and H. K. Carroll. 

It remains to say that all these conspicuous men — these secre- 
taries and bishops and editors — could have accomplished little 
for the cause of missions without the laity. The rich have given 
large sums, but the multitude of the poor have equaled them. 
Poor women have starved themselves, have done their own heavy 
domestic work, that they might give their sons to foreign missions 
and their daughters to the Woman's Foreign and Home Mission- 
ary Societies. I thank God that I sat under the spell of Dr. 
Durbin; I thank him also for his successors, each in his own 
order, who have furnished instruction and stimulus. 

As for the missionaries, when I think of Maclay, practically the 
founder of our missions in China and Japan, and of William 
Butler, the founder of our missions in India and Mexico ; when 
I recall where Bishop Wiley is buried, and how he came to be 
buried there ; and think of Kingsley, who made the first episcopal 
missionary journey around the world, and unwittingly was ap- 
proaching the Jerusalem which is above when turning aside to 
visit the Jerusalem which is beneath ; and when I remember the 
missionaries that have died far from their homes and the scenes 
of their youth, and especially those missionaries who in extreme 
age or infirmity have been brought back to this country, to linger 
among a generation that has come up since they departed — I say 
when I realize all these things and what they mean I seem to 
myself to behold a great company of men and women the latchet 
of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose ! 



MISSIONS AND SPIRITUALITY 55 

SPIRITUAL PREPARATION FOR MISSION- 
ARY SERVICE 

The Rev. A. H. Tuttle, D.D. 

The theme of this paper was given me with the understanding 
that I should discuss it in relation to the Church at home as 
well as to the missionary in the field. Otherwise I would hesitate 
to consider the subject at all; because I believe that the spiritual 
qualifications of the missionary differ in no respect from those 
required for the kingdom of our God everywhere. 

There is undoubtedly a great variety of gifts and methods Spiritual Gifts 
among the Lord's people, but they are all pervaded by the one 
spirit which gives them their distinctive character as spiritual. 
The missionary is not lone and peculiar in this respect. He 
should be a converted man ; so should we all. Like him, we all 
should be recipients of the quickening Spirit, should know God 
and be consecrated to his cause. Spirituality is confined to no 
clime or mode of service. Whether in heathenism or in Gospel 
lands, "This honor have all the saints." 

Nor do we believe that there is at this time any urgent need of 
our pressing upon the toilers in missionary fields the necessity of 
living close to God and partaking of the heavenly gift. The very 
character of their work is such as to force them either to a 
constant and conscious union with him, or to drive them from 
the field. 

In Christian lands it is possible for one to engage in a sacred A Suggestion 
calling without any measure of spiritual life. For its worldly ° vary 
emoluments we may perform our duty at the holy altar in a way 
perfunctory, hollow, double-minded, soulless, without any keen 
sense of the tremendous issues of our acts. An ecclesiastical 
office may be degraded into a secular calling, without demanding 
personal sacrifices or setting up any close tests of Christian char- 
acter. But we cannot conceive of one engaging in missionary 
work from any other motive than the love of Christ. We well 
remember how Dr. William Butler when about to start for India, 
leaving his little children in the fatherland, and being asked by an 
affectionate mother, "How can you do it?" responded with an 
emotion that suggested Calvary, "Only for Jesus." 

It was this spirit that carried Morrison to China, and Carey to 



56 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

Spirituality of India, and Judson to Burma ; and it is this that has set many of 
Missionaries our c h j ces t men and women in voluntary expatriation and the 
severing of the dearest domestic ties. Certainly the love of ad- 
venture, ambition for distinction, or greed could not hold them 
for any length of time to the immeasurable sacrifices required for 
their work. A passion for lost souls begotten of a conviction that 
Christ has called them to this mission alone will provide a sus- 
taining motive in their prolonged and unrequiting toil. The 
result is that our missionaries are remarkable for their genuine 
spirituality. We remember a description given by Bishop Foster 
of his first prayer meeting in a foreign missionary station. He 
said that he had never seen such a manifest presence of God in 
an ordinary midweek service in all his history as a minister in his 
native land. He supposed at first that this meeting must have 
been exceptional. But he found that it was the usual thing in 
every service in places most widely separated, and came to the 
conclusion that the unvarying fact was due to the vigorous 
spiritual life of missionaries everywhere. Corresponding with 
this testimony is our own observation of the influence of returned 
missionaries. In the domestic circle, in social life, and in the 
various services of the church their presence has been vitalizing 
and uplifting. 

From the personal character of our missionaries and their 
heroic work in the world we have reached the conclusion which 
we make the thesis of our paper. We will discuss it, however, 
not from the side already suggested, however fruitful it may be — 
missionary work compelling an increasing spirituality — but will 
consider it in the reverse order, which we believe is as philosoph- 
ical as it is practical, namely, spirituality compelling missionary 
work. 

It is not necessary for us to attempt an elaborate statement of 
the meaning of spirituality. The spiritual mind is a mind per- 
vaded by the Spirit of God; and the attributes of the divine 
Spirit give character to the human spirit which receives it. We 
will name a few of its most obvious features and note their rela- 
tion to missionary work. 
God -' s I. The Holy Spirit is God himself; and when he fills the 

human soul there is a profound sense of God's presence. It is 
said of the wicked that "God is not in all his thoughts." In con- 
trast with this is the statement that "They that are after the Spirit 



MISSIONS AND SPIRITUALITY 57 

do mind the things of the Spirit." "Mind" them — for thoughts, 
affections, motives do not hold ascendency in the mind by any 
lawless chance, but are determined by our wish ; and in their final 
settlement are more or less directly under the control of our will. 
It is the will that encourages, retains, rejects, and finally settles 
their spontaneous and habitual recurrence. And it is this fact 
that makes them decisive of character. So the mind that turns 
to God by conscious purpose, in holy desire, in diligent search for 
his will as revealed in his word and his providence, in communion 
with him in the secrecies of the closet and the worship of the 
sanctuary, comes into an abiding realization of God's presence, 
his authority, his guidance, his care. There is a vivid sense of a Sense of 
the nearness of Christ, with all those personal elements of love ]$ e c 25|J ne8S 
and gratitude which make it an actual fellowship. "The world 
knoweth it not ;" but to us it is life itself, awakening and libera- 
ting the soul, enlarging our being, and bringing us into an 
experience compared with which a life of personal indulgence is 
dullness itself. When for any reason that sense of the divine 
presence is lost the spiritual mind pants for it as the hart for the 
water brooks : "O God, my soul thirsteth for thee," etc. It often 
reaches the ardor of a lofty and urgent enthusiasm: "For the 
love of Christ constraineth me ;" and the vividness of a hallowed 
and transporting joy : "Whom having not seen, ye love ; in whom, 
though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy 
unspeakable and full of glory." This communion with God, 
which is a distinguishing feature of genuine spirituality, is some- 
times confounded with religious emotion; and so mere feeling, 
which is only the bloom, is frequently cultivated as the root of 
spiritual life. But religious rhapsody is not fellowship; it may 
be a mischievous counterfeit. It has often misled holy men from 
the true purpose of active life, which God's work in the world 
requires, into one of mystical contemplation. 

We have no disposition to sit in judgment on all contemplative Mysticism 
mystics. Some of them have so blessed our world as almost to 
persuade us that their system must be of God. Bernard of 
Clairvaux, Thomas a Kempis, Madame Guyon, Fenelon, and 
others of similar seraphic piety we hold in veneration. But, not- 
withstanding the exceptional excellence of their characters, we 
dissent from their systems in two particulars. It relegates to the 
department of feeling and imagination that which should place 



58 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



An Essential 
Feature of 
Spirituality 



Fellowship 
with God 



itself in all appointed duties, in the most active, the most crowded, 
the most harassed and tempted life. A second fatal feature of 
the system is that it is apt to allow what it calls the intuitions of 
the spirit to overrule the word of God. Mysticism was beautiful 
even in its errors when it went hand in hand with God's word. 
But when it denied the supremacy of the Scriptures it became 
debased and was only a caricature of the true inner life. 

But the errors of the mystics should not divert us from the 
great fact that we have named as an essential feature of spirit- 
uality, namely, a deep and abiding sense of God's presence. 

1. It is this that inspires missionary motive. Christ's "Go," 
with which all the four gospels close, is as though the voice of the 
Master addressed personally to us a word of supreme authority. 
It appeals to the conscience as no worldly argument for the need 
of missions could. 

2. It is this fellowship that is the secret of the mission worker's 
power. "With God all things are possible" — which means not 
that God can do what we cannot do, which is a mere truism ; 
much less that our faith or holiness gives us power over God, 
which it certainly never does; but accord with God allies us to 
his omnipotence. Just as in the realm of the natural world to 
know its laws and accord with them turns all its powers into our 
service, so in the realm spiritual to know its laws and accord 
with them is for us to fellowship with God's almightiness. 

3. It is this fellowship with God that sustains the missionary 
in his work. "Lo, I am with you alway" is his in actual expe- 
rience. In whatever peril he may be placed "the eternal God is 
his refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms." The horses 
and chariots of God fill the air of every Dothan where the servants 
of Jehovah are in the path of duty. Should disaster come, as it 
often does, the missionary is sustained with the indescribable joy 
of consciously sharing with his Lord in the great principle of 
vicarious sacrifice by which the woe of this world is to be healed. 
"Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my 
part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh 
for his body's sake, which is the church." 

4. It is this fellowship that gives the missionary the assurance 
of the final success of his toil. How small is the stone cut out 
without hands ! But it breaks the image to pieces and is sure to 
become a great mountain and fill the whole earth. 



MISSIONS AND SPIRITUALITY 59 

II. A second essential feature of spirituality is an active sym- God's Purpose 
pathy with the supreme purpose of God in the world and his for the World 
methods of achieving it. God's purpose as he himself has 
revealed it in his Son is to get to himself a whole race of children, 
every one of whom, like the eternal Son, shall be witnesses of his 
truth and executors of his will and ultimately share with him in 
the fullness of his glory. For this the foundations of the world 
were laid, and this is the key to all history. The calamity of sin, 
which threatened the utter overthrow of this divine intent, is met 
by the Gospel of redemption in Christ, which is to be carried to 
the ends of the earth and offered to all mankind, when our Lord 
will return in the glory of his power. It is not needful for us to 
discuss the question which now divides the Church as to whether 
the entire world is to be converted before the day of Christ's 
coming; or whether the world is to continue its antagonism to 
the Gospel till the end of this dispensation, the good and evil 
maturing together like wheat and tares practically indistinguish- 
able. On one thing the spiritually minded are united, namely, 
that the Gospel, by which alone men are to be saved, is to be 
offered to every human creature. If all do not accept it many 
will, and thus "God visits the nations to take out of them a people 
for his name." 

I recently met with a new rendering of a familiar passage of No Frontier 
Scripture. It is taken from an old Syriac fragment : "And to his 
kingdom there shall be no frontier." God's reign is to be limitless 
not only as to time, but also as to territory. That individual or 
church which is not in sympathy with this commanding purpose 
of God may have many excellent qualities, but is certainly not 
spiritual. One office of the Spirit is to execute the divine will, 
and when there is no sympathetic movement toward the achieve- 
ment of Christ's supreme purpose in the world it is proof positive 
of a deadly absence of the Holy Ghost life. On the other hand, 
when this supreme purpose of God gets a vital hold on the heart 
it becomes an absorbing and controlling passion, which is dis- 
tinguished by two things, both of which are recognized features 
of genuine spirituality: 

First, a hearty consecration of self to missions. To some it 
comes with the force of divine command, "I must go;" to others, 
"I must send;" to all, "I must sustain by prayer and sympathy 
those whom the Holy Ghost has set apart for this work." This 



6o 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Self- 
indulgence 



Unfaltering 
Faith 



feature of spirituality stands out in marked contrast with the 
spirit of self-indulgence which characterizes the world, in which 
we are compelled to include a large portion of the Church, which 
has so far departed from the spirit of its Lord as to be perilously 
near to antichrist. 

One of our monthly magazines has been recently publishing a 
series of entertaining articles on "The Luxuries of Millionaires," 
which is provocative of serious reflection among those whose 
hearts have been touched with the sorrow of Christ, who came 
seeking to recover that which God had lost. Think of a single 
woman keeping stored away in a safe deposit vault jewels valued 
at more than one million dollars, the interest of which would keep 
fifty chosen men in India gathering precious jewels for the crown 
of our Christ. One man spent for a single picture a sum sufficient 
to put a hundred consecrated men in the heart of China's 
wretchedness, to purify and beautify imperishable souls. A 
private yacht which cost nearly a million for its construction and 
equipment consumes when on a deep-sea cruise eighty tons of 
coal a day. The coal bill for a season is twenty-five thousand 
dollars, and the wages paid thirteen thousand dollars. This is 
altogether aside from the cabin table and other expenses. There 
are now in the lists of the New York Yacht Club one hundred and 
sixty-four steam yachts which cost their owners from ten 
thousand dollars to twenty-five thousand dollars a month. A 
society woman last August gave an entertainment at Newport at 
a cost of little less than fifty thousand dollars. We are told of a 
woman's dress made of one-thousand-dollar bank notes, with 
sleeves made of still costlier certificates of stocks. The money 
thus wasted would cover Africa with evangels who would bring 
the unclad savages not alone to decent clothing for their bodies, 
but white robes, imperishable, for their spirits. 

This extravagance of the immensely wealthy appears shocking 
to us because of its enormous figures. But the character of sin 
is not to be measured by its bulk. The mites are as decisive of 
character as the gold coins. In homes of moderate comfort men 
and women are living in a style that exhausts the last dollar of 
their income, leaving no tithes for God. This is an extravagance 
that is sure to wither the spiritual faculty. 

The other feature of spirituality which an appreciation of God's 
purpose in the world creates is an unfaltering faith in its final 



MISSIONS AND SPIRITUALITY 6l 

accomplishment. The worldly mind lacks the elevation of thought 
and conviction necessary for a sustained and aggressive faith in 
missions. It is hampered by questions from the time viewpoint. 
Does it pay ? Are not the demands at home more urgent ? Is it 
best to make such immense sacrifices of men and treasure? Are 
not the heathen better off as they are ? Do not commerce and war 
effect better results than the Gospel method ? But all this is swept 
away by a single breath of the Holy Ghost which lifts the recipient 
spirit into an assurance of the will of omnipotence. It is this that 
gives to the missionary in the field and the missionary Church at 
home a faith that dares the impossible, an audacity which to those 
who live on a lower level is reckless and perilous, but which 
proves to be the power of the very God, and leads into a career 
that is really miraculous and reads, as has been forcibly put, "like 
a chapter in the book of the Acts." 

III. One thing already implied in what we have said needs to TJnworidii- 
be separately emphasized as a feature of the spiritual mind ; ness 
partly because it is popularly identified with spirituality, and 
partly because of the common misconception of its character and 
its practical bearing on the work of God in the world, namely, 
unworldliness. When this world dominates the individual and 
the Church, both cease to be spiritual; and that means that the 
spirit of missions is gone. A worldly Church, that studies its 
interests mainly on its earthly side, has never been and never can 
be zealous for the salvation of men, especially for those far beyond 
its immediate locality. It lacks that keen insight and that far 
outlook which the inspiration of the Holy Spirit imparts. It is 
without conviction and motive for a work so essentially divine. 

We believe that right here is the secret of the exigency to The Present 
which the cause of missions is reduced at this time. It is not the Exi & enc 7 
want of information, nor of consecrated and capable workers, nor 
of a sufficiently organized propaganda; nor is it to be found in 
the poverty of the people. In all these particulars the Church was 
never so richly equipped, and never was so great a door and 
effectual open to us as at this very hour. But notwithstanding 
all this the various societies of Protestantism are brought to such 
a critical state as not only to call a halt to any farther advance, 
but to seriously consider where and how we can retrench. The 
secret, we believe, is mainly right here in the general worldliness 
of the Church of God. Very generally the motive and purpose 



62 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

of the Church seem to begin and end in its material good. It is 
all of this world. When a church finds itself in an emergency, 
instead of falling down on its knees and inquiring of the Lord, 
with the acuteness of the market place it resolves to put a new 
front on its building or enlarge its organ, or strengthen its choir 
with new soprano or tenor chosen solely with a view to its art 
regardless of its spiritual character ; or to search for a pulpiteer 
who can "draw," with hardly a question as to whether the draw- 
ing power be that of the stage or the cross. To strengthen its 
waning life, it broadens its phylacteries and adds another wheel 
to its machinery. 

Of course, we know that the children of God are citizens of 
this world, and the spiritual faculty will find its proper exercise 
and employment along the line of its earthly conditions. The 
Holy Ghost does not ignore, but uses good business methods. It 
is not the use of earthly methods that constitutes worldliness, but 
the absence of the inner spirit and motive that finds its vital 
breath in the atmosphere of the unseen world. No wise business 
methods can take the place of personal devoutness. Work must 
wait on worship. 

Citizens of I have said that we are citizens of this world in our activity ; 

but we are citizens of heaven in our life. This last must come 
first. There must be life before action. The moment we lose 
that life we have stepped down on the plane of this world. Then 
even sacred things become worldliness. Official earnestness will 
pass for holy ministries ; discussion of heavenly topics will be 
taken for spirituality ; warmth of manner will be mistaken for 
heavenly-mindedness ; artificial fervor in the declaration of God's 
truth will supply the place of an inward and growing experience 
of its power. All this means Sardis, which has a name to live 
and is dead. 

Supreme Need The supreme need of the hour felt by all those who long for 
the triumph of our Christ in the world is a more profound and 
healthful spiritual life among those who bear his name. 

At the recent general Missionary Conference held at New 
Orleans by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, the venerable 
Dr. B. M. Palmer, of the Presbyterian Church, one of the greatest 
men of our age and one of its ripest Christian spirits, after speak- 
ing briefly of the unusual opportunities opening for the Church, 
said : "All this is our joy and comfort ; but, brothers, does not 



of the Hour 



MISSIONS AND SPIRITUALITY 63 

the Church now require, in a degree far beyond what we have 
ever enjoyed, the outpouring of the Holy Ghost? If all the 
branches of the Church of Christ could only enjoy just now such 
an outpouring as we had on Pentecost it would be ready almost 
for the millennium, and we might speedily expect the coming of 
the blessed Lord to reign King of the nations, as he now is the 
King of the saints, and see him wearing before the assembled 
universe his many crowns upon his head." Our own Bishop 
Moore closes an interview given to The Christian Advocate with 
these significant words : "I beg to add, as my most solemn judg- 
ment and most emphatic word, that the supreme need at home and 
in the foreign field is a mighty and overwhelming revival of 
religion." 

The chief thing, then, for us who have the cause of God Deeper 
throughout the world at heart is to seek to bring ourselves and ^ er 
the entire Church to a deeper and truer spiritual life. And we Spiritual Life 
can do it. God has set us here for that very purpose. We will 
do it, however, not chiefly by conventions, committees, discussions, 
and organizations. All these, however wisely wrought, may only 
add to the cumbrous materialism of an already overweighted 
Church. And that they certainly will do unless they are vitalized 
from the beginning with the breath from above. Let our con- 
ventions be pervaded with the spirit of worship ; let our com- 
mitteemen first take counsel with God in the secret place where 
he makes known his covenant ; let us enter upon our discussions 
only when we are conscious that God's presence enfolds us. Then 
our organism will not be a busy factory, but a watered garden. 
Then we will assuredly see that which the angel of the Apocalypse 
showed St. John : "A pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, 
proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the 
midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, the tree 
of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit 
every month : and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of 
the nations." 



6 4 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Numerical 
Increase of 
Heathen 



The Work 
that Remains 



HOME ALLIES IN OUR WORK OF 
EVANGELIZATION 

H. K. Carroll, LL.D. 

The battle for righteousness was never so fierce since the fall 
of man as it is in our age. God's hosts were never so sorely beset 
both from within and without their own lines. The enemy was 
never so thoroughly organized, so numerous, so determined, and 
so well commanded as now, in the opening years of the twentieth 
century. The hordes of heathen peoples, Moslems, unbelievers, 
backsliders, Pharisees, hypocrites, are vast, indeed, compared 
with the true and valiant soldiers of Jesus Christ. The natural 
increase of the nine hundred or ten hundred millions of the earth's 
population who are not Christians is in itself a formidable factor 
of the enemy's strength. In the past ten years the population of 
India, now about 295,000,000, gained by natural increase, not- 
withstanding the ravages of the famine, over seven millions; 
while the increase of the Christian population was only 764,000, 
or a little over three fourths of a million. That is, for every 
Christian gained there was a net increase of ten Hindus and 
Moslems. The disparity in the relative increase of heathen and 
Christians in China, with its fourth or more of the world's 
population, must be even greater. We cannot, therefore, escape 
the conclusion that the absolute increase of the forces outside the 
kingdom of Christ is far greater than that of the forces within 
that kingdom. Think of the masses of sinners in the world — sin- 
ners in the black midnight of idolatry and fetichism; sinners in 
the glimmer of a faint and far-off star, as the followers of 
Mohammed; sinners in the gloom of the faded light of slowly 
dying hope, as the Jews; and sinners, daring, defiant, doubting 
sinners in the white light of the noonday sun. What a work 
remains for the hosts of God ! Surely we need the encouragement 
of prophecy that "one shall chase a thousand, and two put ten 
thousand to flight ;" that a nation shall be born in a day, and that 
the time shall come when every knee shall bow and every tongue 
confess that Jesus is the Christ. Surely we need to strengthen 
our forces, and develop our resources and increase our efforts, and 
especially to welcome the cooperation of all who are "on our 
side." 



HOME ALLIES 65 

We are not losing ground, we are steadily gaining; but our victories 
very conquests tend to increase the strenuousness of the campaign J^JJjJf 
we wage. Our problems are multiplied by our victories. Dewey 
won the Philippines in a single day, before breakfast; but the 
working out of a system of effective civil government for them, 
is a matter of years. Sampson and Schley gave a new baptism 
of glory to our Independence Day by what they did at Santiago ; 
but the questions which free Cuba must settle multiply before the 
little republic. 

The work of evangelizing the world is the great work before 
us; but it seems as though almost every good influence and 
agency needs to be associated with it. The word of life, spoken, 
written, practiced, wins the convert from heathenism; but the 
mind and heart, the purposes and aspirations, the habits and ac- 
tions of that convert must be molded anew. After he has passed 
from death unto life the activities of the new life must be made 
attractive and possible to him. A new society for himself and his 
family must be prepared, and a new education on a Christian 
basis provided. 

There is a place, therefore, in this campaign of preaching, A Work for 
printing, teaching, healing, for all the people of God. The Mis- 
sionary Society, according to its Manual, is simply the Methodist 
Episcopal Church "in a corporate form for the purpose of estab- 
lishing Christian missions in our own and in foreign lands." It 
has the command of Christ, "Go ye into all the world, and preach 
the Gospel to every creature," as its authoritative commission; 
but it recognizes the priesthood of believers as also of divine ap- 
pointment, and therefore welcomes most heartily and without 
hesitation or reservation the cooperation of the women of our 
Church in the Woman's Foreign and the Woman's Home Mis- 
sionary Societies. By our Church law they are gleaners in our 
wheat field, not being allowed to take any of the bound sheaves ; 
but the harvesters leave the corners and many well-filled heads 
of grain to the patient and faithful gleaners, and when the thresh- 
ing is all done and the heaps compared, lo, it is found that the 
two belonging to the women are more than half as large as that 
of the parent society. Surely, this is very successful gleaning. 
Of these gleanings nearly $427,000 went last year to our foreign 
fields in support of the agencies established and directed by the 
women. Take away this sum from our foreign missions, and 
5 



66 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Woman's 
Work 



The Home 
Field 



Places of 
Worship 



you would take away thirty-six per cent of the total expenditures. 
Very suggestive, this, of the might of the woman's mite. 

Nor are the women less successful as missionaries than as 
money raisers. There is no field so distant, difficult, or dan- 
gerous; no place so isolated; no people so savage or degraded; 
no work so hard or hazardous as to deter women from offering 
themselves for the Master's service. As Christian women among 
heathen women and children, whose doors are shut to men, they 
are heralds of light and life. Millions of the enslaved sex behind 
the purdah would be helpless and hopeless but for these teachers 
and preachers of the Gospel who count not their lives dear unto 
themselves so that they might finish their course with joy and 
testify to the Gospel of the grace of God. "I have seen," said a 
Chinese preacher, "the wounded side of Christ." He referred to 
a noble woman of Australia, Mrs. Saunders, who, her two 
daughters having been killed by a mob in China, came herself as 
a missionary to take up their work where they had laid it down 
for a martyr's crown. Women were not only first at the 
sepulcher, they were also last at the cross, and last at the burial. 

The Woman's Home Missionary Society is diligent in the 
prosecution of its excellent work in Utah, in the South, in the 
cities, among foreign-speaking populations and the aborigines, 
in the maintenance of children's homes, rest homes and training 
schools for missionaries and deaconesses, and other work for the 
advancement of the kingdom. The deaconess is often, at least in 
Utah, the pioneer to prepare the way for the preacher. We are 
glad to count the two woman's societies as our allies, our gracious, 
modest, brave, efficient allies. 

It is obvious that we need much help and strong help in the 
wide and diversified work of our immense home field. The Mis- 
sionary Society supports in whole, or in part, about 4,000 
missionaries in the United States and its colonies, exclusive of 
the Philippines. This requires from the parent society alone 
more than $500,000 yearly. 

But converts at home as well as abroad must be cared for after 
they are secured, and the first need is a place of worship, where 
they can be instructed, exhorted, encouraged in Christian living, 
Christian duty, and Christian activity. For the newborn babe a 
cradle or crib is provided; not less necessary to the newborn 
soul is shelter in a nursery of faith. Paul could make tents for 



HOME ALLIES 6? 

his converts, if necessary, with his own hands; so can some of 
our own apostles. A little minister who rode thirteen hundred 
miles in a buggy, from Nebraska to a Rocky Mountain appoint- 
ment, found a mere shanty serving for the house of God. He 
exhorted, urged, begged the trustees to build a new church, but 
utterly without avail. Their cry was, "We can't, we can't." 
Finally he said, "You can if you will ; but if you won't, I can and 
will." And, with saw and hammer and plane and trowel, he did ; 
and looking down upon a group of trustees from the cupola of 
the completed building he said, "Brethren, didn't I say it could 
be done?" But we have more pressing work for ministers than 
this. Their supreme calling is to plan and direct the building of 
Christian characters, leaving to the Board of Church Extension Church 
the high function of master church builder. By gifts and loans Extension 
the board has made possible the erection of more than 12,000 
churches. It does not give churches entire and unconditional — 
that would tend to paralyze local effort ; but it aims so to aid as 
to encourage weak societies to put forth their best efforts to raise 
their own rooftree. Consider what a boon this system has been 
to the struggling negroes of the South whom it has assisted in 
erecting 2,600 churches ; to the poor whites of the same section, 
who have secured 1,700 churches in the same way; to the people 
of the wide West, beyond the Mississippi, who gratefully credit 
to it 5,800 churches. These figures are eloquent of heroic en- 
deavor. Think of those 12,000 churches as so many centers of 
light, dissipating moral darkness, shining on the pathway of 
weak and weary wayfarers, and guiding straight to the gates of 
heaven. The saloon is Satan's seat; the church is the house of 
God. God seems to be saying to the Church, as Bishop Simpson 
remarked: "Intrench yourselves; build forts; garrison them 
well ; a struggle is coming ; we must have our places of defense 
and concentration." 

The Missionary Society has done what it could to evangelize Work for 
the millions of negroes and poor whites in the South, the resources 
of that section not being sufficient for so great a work. But the 
Church saw at the beginning that a special effort must be made 
to remove the curse of ignorance. We must establish elementary 
schools, because the States of the South could not be expected to 
meet the educational needs of their people for a generation. We 
now see that another generation will be required to make their 



68 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

public schools adequate to the work to be done. We must also 
plant institutions of higher education in the South to prepare 
young men and women of both races to discharge honorably and 
successfully their duties in social, civil, religious, business, and 
professional life. The Church devised for its instrument in ac- 
complishing this vast and important work of reformation the 
Freedmen's Aid and Southern Education Society. We hail it as 
a noble ally of the Missionary Society, for it is molding the lives 
of our converts according to the high ideals of Christian intelli- 
gence, activity, and achievement. The founding of a university 
or college is surely no small or ordinary enterprise. The society 
of which we are speaking has founded and is maintaining eight 
universities and four colleges, besides twelve academies, a theo- 
logical seminary, and a medical school. Its work is eminently a 
Christian work, and the influence it exerts in the elevating and 
harmonizing of antagonistic races cannot fail of glorious results. 
City Missions Methodism began its life on this side of the sea in the city, but 
quickly followed the tide of population into the country. The 
early fathers went to the villages and farms and kept abreast of 
the pioneers as they moved the frontier farther and farther toward 
the setting sun. They were voices crying in the wilderness, 
which blossomed like the rose under their heroic labors. When 
factories divided interest with farms, and railroads quickened 
and increased the tides of migration, the flood turned toward the 
cities, and here is the problem of the Church and of the State and 
of civilization itself. Absorbed in diffusing itself over our con- 
stantly enlarging national domain, Methodism left to its churches 
in the cities the task of solving the problems thrust upon them. 
The time soon came when their task assumed such alarming pro- 
portions that city missionary societies sought association for 
consultation and mutual encouragement. So we have the 
National City Evangelization Union, with organizations in more 
than fifty cities, reporting an annual outlay of more than $175,000. 
This is missionary work, as real, as necessary, as important as 
any that the Missionary Society itself is doing. It is not com- 
petitive, it is complementary, and it is the policy of the Missionary 
Society to promote it in every practicable way and to make larger 
and larger appropriations to it, as its funds may warrant. Our 
great cities are epitomes of races and nations, babels of languages 
and pantheons of religion. Here one may see how perfectly home 



HOME ALLIES 69 

missions and foreign missions become one, and how the same 
work is being wrought in New York and Chicago and San Fran- 
cisco as in the capitals of Europe and the cities of Asia. 

If one will listen long and very attentively he will hear the Sunday 
tramp, tramp, tramp of the mightiest army the earth has ever c 00 s 
known. It is invading every country and is sure to conquer. 
Men will step from its ranks and ascend thrones now occupied 
and rule as emperors, kings, princes, and presidents. Every 
place of power and influence will sooner or later fall into the 
hands of these invincible invaders. I borrow the figure. This 
advancing host are the children of to-day. As we pass off the 
stage of action they will take our places. What will they be when 
they come into their inheritance? Angels of light or demons of 
darkness. Such are the possible alternatives, and those who now 
wield the scepter of power in State and Church and society must 
decide which they shall be. The Christian family and the Church 
nursery, the Sunday school, must be chief factors in molding the 
characters of the future generation. Our Sunday School Union 
is a powerful ally of the Missionary Society in the work of 
evangelization, reporting last year an increase of 81 schools, of 
100,000 in average attendance, and, best of all, of 127,540 con- 
versions. The work of the Union covers the entire territory of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church, not being limited to the United 
States, and I call attention to the significant fact that the two 
Annual Conferences reporting the largest number of Sunday 
schools are the North India and the Northwest India. I must 
not forget to mention in this connection the good work of the 
Tract Society, at home and abroad, in circulating sound Christian 
literature. 

Last, but not least, among our allies is the American Bible American 
Society. What would the Church do without the Scriptures? It Bible Society 
would be like a ship at sea without chart or compass or rudder. 
Our debt of obligation to the American Bible Society can never 
be paid. No matter where our missionaries go it is there to put 
the Scriptures into the hands of their converts ; no matter to what 
strange people or tribe they may be sent it has the word of God 
ready for their use, so that in all lands the miracle of Pentecost 
may be constantly witnessed, and every man hears the inspired 
writers of the blessed book "speaking in his own language." Last 
year more than 1,700,000 volumes of the Holy Scriptures were 



70 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Other 
Agencies 



Strength of 
the Church 



issued by that venerable society, upward of a million of which 
went to foreign lands, at a cost of $230,000. 

I regret that I cannot adequately represent, in the time allotted 
me, other societies and agencies contributary to the great work 
of evangelizing the world — the Board of Education, which has 
enabled thousands of young ministers to secure their preparation 
for home and foreign fields; the universities, colleges, and 
seminaries which have been as upper rooms for pentecostal bap- 
tism; that powerful lever of religious thought and activity, the 
periodical press; the Book Concern, with its choice books de- 
signed to help forward the kingdom of Christ; and the Young 
Men's Christian Association, whose work in foreign fields is of 
inestimable value. The agencies are, indeed, many and fruitful 
of result; and there are still others which might not improperly 
find place here, if time allowed. 

Such are the allies which the stress of the world's need of the 
Gospel has brought into action. Our first thought is of the zeal 
and might of our Church. Four thousand eight hundred mis- 
sionaries in the forefront of the battle, with a corps of engineers 
and builders, sappers and miners to complete the equipment, 
requiring about $2,500,000 annually for the support of the varied 
operations! Generous, indeed, are our members, and constant 
and willing in their sacrifices. Our second thought is one of 
intense longing for a deeper earnestness and zeal on the part of 
the Church in providing more men, more means for the campaign. 
They can be furnished and no other interest suffer, no other need 
remain unsatisfied. The resources of the Church have not been 
developed; indeed, they have hardly been explored. Our third 
thought is one of hope and cheer. As we view the splendid array, 
led by the great Captain of our salvation and terrible as an army 
with banners; as we hear the martial tread of the mighty hosts 
of God shaking the continents, and catch the strains in many 
tongues, of their songs of victory, we take courage. "If God be 
for us, who can be against us? If Christ direct the battle what 
matter who commands on the other side, or how many legions he 
leads? We must not falter before the foe, nor desert the cause 
of the Lord ; but trust and obey, trust and obey, and fight on till 
the end come and the kingdoms of this world become the 
kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. 



OUR OPPORTUNITY Jl 

OUR OPPORTUNITY 

Bishop C. H. Fowler 

Opportunity is power. What we ought to do we can do. God's 
When God opens a door before a people that is his command to leadership 
them to enter, and his promise to back them to the extent of his 
resources. This law underlies leadership. History is full of the 
transfer of power from the theoretical leader to the actual leader. 
In the critical hour the multitude stands back. Some man able to 
see God and read events steps forward into the breach, other men 
catch his inspiration, gather about him obeying his order, the 
good cause is advanced and buttressed, a new figure appears in 
history, and a new name is found on the scroll of honor. When- 
ever a people sees God's beckoning hand and hears his call and is 
obedient to the heavenly vision, then they rise to higher levels, 
take up heavier burdens, achieve greater results, and reap wider 
harvests for God. But whenever through fear or selfishness or 
diversion they hesitate and doubt, then they see some braver 
people step to the front and take the place which they might 
have had. 

The great doors of the world are not often swung wide open. Doors that 
God waited many centuries for a Gutenberg or a Columbus, also close 
many centuries for a Luther or a Wesley. Moreover, the great 
doors do not stand open before a man or people long unused. 
They swing back again. A door opened in the house of Cornelius 
for Peter to become the great apostle to the Gentiles. But Peter 
feared, and in Jerusalem turned back toward Judaism, and God 
called another. He found him on the highway near Damascus, 
Saul of Tarsus, and sent him "far hence unto the Gentiles," and 
gave him the glory of widening out Judaism from being the 
religious cult of a subjugated province at the foot of the Mediter- 
ranean to become the religion of all races over all lands for 
all ages. 

It is a great thing to have a great world door opened before a 
man or people. France had a high day of opportunity when 
Protestantism almost reached the throne. St. Bartholomew's 
massacre shut the door in her face ; she staggered back through 
centuries of superstitions and ignorance and cruelty to the Reign 
of Terror. So great was the crime of St. Bartholomew's Day 



J2 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

that God has not forgiven it. Poor France, glorying in Dreyfus 
trials, lies like an infected tatter on the threshold of the twentieth 
century. It is a fearful thing to have a great world door shut 
against a people. South America saw the great open door when, in 
the beginning of the last century, the English flag was unfurled 
over Montevideo at the mouth of the La Plata. She bid fair to be 
a great free people with a steady government and the wealth of a 
continent in her hands, but treachery, bribery, and crime hauled 
down that flag and turned that continent back to the superstition 
and slavery and cruelty and robbery of Spain. The hand of the 
inquisitor sealed up the continent again. It is a fearful thing to 
have a great world door shut against a people. 

"Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, 
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side. 

Careless seems the great Avenger ; history's pages but record 
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word; 
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the Throne — ■ 
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own." 

An Answered God has opened the great doors of the world to Methodism and 
Prayer j s beckoning her to enter in and possess the kingdom. These 

doors open on every side. We can hardly go amiss. The only 
chance to miss everything is to stand still in our old tracks. I can 
remember when we were praying God to open the lands of 
heathenism. This prayer has long since been answered. Now we 
must pray God to send forth laborers into the field where the 
harvest is already white. But we are especially called upon to 
consider the fields recently opened to us, and new openings in old 
fields which constitute part of the emphasis put upon our atten- 
tion in these last three or four years. 

It is difficult wisely to interpret Providence. God writes in 
such large characters that few, if any, are able to read and accu- 
rately to interpret what is written. An Indian carried a chip 
upon which a Plymouth soldier had written a message to his 
family. It was to him a deep mystery that awed him. He held 
it in a split stick and carried it with reverence and holy fear. He 
could not read and understand what was written. But he saw 
the marks and knew that the chip would talk to those who could 
read the writing. Somewhat in this way we feel and read the 



OUR OPPORTUNITY 73 

purposes of Providence. We cannot accurately interpret his 

writing upon the sky and in events, but we know that something 

is there recorded. Sometime some revelation of Providence will 

come. It is for us to know that his will is being written. We 

must study it as carefully as possible and do our best to follow 

its indications. 

In personal decisions it is a simple rule to follow where things interpreta- 

open naturally at the seams. This is nature's order, to follow the L ion ?' 

Providence 
line of least resistance. When events thrust a land up into the 

center of the field of vision it is safe to conclude that we are 
called to look upon it and inspect it. When a child is dropped 
into the lap of a family that is a clear indication that God wants 
the family to care for that child. When a country is dropped into 
the lap of a people it is safe to conclude that God wants that 
people to care for that country. The determining elements are 
three in a righteous cause: need, accessibility, and ability — need 
and accessibility on the part of the people who are to be helped, 
ability on the part of the people who are to help. When these 
points are settled the call is clear; when these three planets are 
in conjunction that constitutes a call from heaven. 

If God ever entered into our history from the holding of North Our New- 
America for Protestant Christianity to the present hour it was 
when he dropped the Spanish colonies of Porto Rico and the 
Philippines into our lap. We were perfectly contented with our 
borders. We were well trained in minding our own business. 
We had not the slightest idea of ever touching the neighboring 
islands. We had a great ruler and statesman a generation ago, 
President Grant, who advised us to buy Cuba and avoid troubles. 
But we were so bent on avoiding foreign complications that we 
all cried out against it ; all parties vied with each other in abusing 
him for it. So he said, "If you do not want to provide against 
trouble,, you need not. Only wait and see." So we sat down 
again in our contentment and never expected to sail out of home 
waters. We went into Havana harbor and slept and dreamed of 
peace, when all unexpectedly God shook us up, just as he said 
to the old prophet, "What do you here? Wake up, get up, go." 
On that awful 14th of February in 1898 the Spanish touched off a 
mine under the Maine, and we woke up, and got up, and went up. 
God said, "Up, go everywhere, stay." We were blown from 
Havana to Manila. We hardly knew where we were. Not one 



74 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

in a hundred of our adults even knew where Manila was. Some 
of us knew that there was some little place where some Manila 
matting was made. Instead of wanting the Philippines we had 
but the faintest idea of what they were. When Dewey cast the 
devil out of Manila we could only say to the Philippines, " Spain 
we know and China we know, but who are you?" So far from 
coveting the Philippines we hardly knew them when we ran 
against them on the high seas. You remember Mazeppa was 
bound to a wild horse and turned loose in the desert, and he says : 

"Thus the vain fool who strove to glut 
His rage, refining on my pain, 
Sent me forth to the wilderness 
Bound, naked, bleeding, and alone, 
To pass the desert to the throne." 

So the Spaniard "strove to glut his rage," and sent us forth, 
"bound, naked, and alone, to pass the desert to the throne." Thus 
as of old Providence rules and overrules, and makes the wrath of 
man to praise him, and restraineth the remainder of his wrath, so 
that all things work together for good to them that love the Lord, 
to us if we love him and keep his commandment, namely, "Go 
ye into all the world." 
Two Gates of If ever man or people had greatness thrust upon them, we have 
been so treated. The explosion under the Maine blew us out of 
our worn-out baby clothes, blew us up into the whole world to 
take up a man's burden and do a man's work. We were not asked 
whether we wanted to be born or not. We were simply projected 
into being and told to make the most of it. There are but two 
gates through which we can escape the responsibilities of being: 
I. Back by the way of inactivity and sluggishness, through the 
gate of imbecility. 2. Off to one side by the way of suicide, 
through the gate of crime. We have hold of the great wheel of 
being, we cannot let go, we must go upward and onward. So we 
were not asked whether we wanted to take these Spanish colonies 
or not; we were simply blown up into the top of the world and 
these colonies were dropped into our lap, and we are told to make 
the most of them. There are but two ways in which we can 
escape our responsibilities: 1. By putting on a fool's cap and 
going away back and sitting down among the fools, whom nature 
dislikes. They always have to take everybody else's dust. Under 



Escape 



OUR OPPORTUNITY 75 

the great law of nature only the fittest survive. 2. By committing 
hari-kari to make room for somebody else to grow strong, using 
us as a fertilizer. We do not want the fool's cap, nor are we ready 
to become mere fertilizer; we have not yet exhausted our divine 
initial impulse. Our last train has not yet gone, leaving us behind 
in the depot, helpless. We are not yet reduced to worn-out forms 
and formulas that once embodied the experiences of living, ad- 
vancing, heroic souls. We are in the early morning of our 
workday. Our golden sun of opportunity is just rising in the 
East, in the far East. Girding on our armor in the vigor of 
early manhood, we must go forth to conquer. 

The Philippines present a most inviting field. Yesterday it The 
was a crime to own a Bible or read it, for which heroic men were plull PP mea 
shot as traitors or banished as enemies of the established Church. 
To-day the Bible is free there under a free flag. The exiles, 
hearing that there is a new flag over the Philippines, are coming 
back and crowding our services. Eleven thousand prisoners in 
Manila alone, condemned for offenses not known to freedom as 
crimes, have been taken out of the cells and chain gangs and 
restored to liberty. Yesterday, under the union of Church and 
State in the Spanish rule, neither property nor family nor life 
was safe. So bad was the administration and so cruel the perse- 
cution that religion became fit to be rejected. It is worse to make 
religion fit to be rejected than it is afterward to reject it. Account 
for the situation as we may, the fact remains that the most 
thoroughly hated creatures in the Philippines are the friars. No 
matter what comes the Filipinos will not accept the friars. The 
friars cannot return to their churches. Even Uncle Sam's bayo- 
nets could not make the people tolerate them. An officer asked 
a prominent man, a Roman Catholic, "How is it that you have 
so many churches and no priests?" The man said, "We cannot 
bear them. They cannot come back. Ten priests came back — 
where are they? Ten from ten leaves nothing. It would take 
a standing army to keep them alive here." The pope and his 
advisers have made their supreme blunder in the Philippines by 
keeping the friars there. The islands are now wide open. Multi- 
tudes of the people are asking for the simple Gospel. The services 
of a single Sabbath have, in more than one instance, secured a 
membership of over one hundred communicants, earnest seekers. 
There are a thousand islands, and millions of people accessible 



7 6 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Porto Rico 



Great 

Heathen 

Masses 



and needy. Their need of the Gospel is down to the famine point. 
They are turning toward Methodism by the thousand. They 
cannot go back. Their past is full of the world's direst specters. 
Fortunes absorbed by a merciless hierarchy, necessities extorted 
by merciless confessors, families desolated by debauched hypo- 
crites — these are the specters that haunt the past of the Filipinos. 
The return of the old shepherds, the friars, like sending wolves 
among sheep, is only driving the people to seek a pure and en- 
lightened faith. The world never before furnished a harvest so 
white for the reapers. The door is wide open. Our opportunity 
confronts us. God says, "Give ye them to eat." 

On the other hand, here beckons Porto Rico. It is by our side. 
It is under our flag. It is inhaling our spirit. It is learning our 
language. It begins to think in English. It is expanding under 
our freedom. It is growing rich on our capital. It is being 
strengthened by our youth. It has a past seared into their very 
flesh by the same branding iron that has marked the Filipinos. 
They are pushed toward us by a tornado of cruelty. It is for us 
to open before them the broad welcome of a pure and peaceful 
Gospel. Their six or eight principal cities should be seized by us 
without a month's delay. Our knowable salvation and joyous 
personal experience should be within their reach at once. A 
million people in a tropical garden sure to overflow with wealth 
calls to us. Our own sons who are being carried there by the 
tides of trade demand of us churches and altars and Sunday 
schools, where they may be nourished and kept in the faith of 
their fathers. The policy forced upon us by the indifference of 
our Church and the emptiness of our missionary treasury is a 
policy of dwarfs and a disgrace to a great people who could mul- 
tiply the two or three men we have there by a hundred, and make 
that island glad with the songs of salvation, if only we would open 
their eyes to the beckoning hands and our hearts to the call 
of God. 

Great and inviting and inspiring as are these new fields, vast 
enough to fire the ambition and inspire the zeal of every valiant 
soul, vast enough to arouse the energies of any slumbering 
Church, vast as are these new fields they are only a narrow fringe 
on the great unwashed heathenism now spread out before the 
Church. In India and China more than half the human race are 
ready for evangelization. If the great heathen masses now upon 



OUR OPPORTUNITY JJ 

the hands of the Church should sit down to an ordinary dinner, 
and all these new ungospeled peoples of Porto Rico and of the 
Philippines should undertake to wait upon them, there would be 
more than 75,000,000 people that these waiters could never reach. 
The table, unserved, thickly seated on both sides, would extend 
across all the continents and over all the seas of the earth. It 
would reach twice around the globe itself. These are accessible 
and inviting. These are open doors. Open doors, did I say? 
No, not doors ! not measured openings marked on the edges by 
gaping hinges — not doors ! Here God has knocked off the very 
sides of the world, so that anybody coming from anywhere can 
come to the center. Here in these uncovered, exposed hundreds 
of millions, here are our opportunities. 

India is under a safe and stable government. India is pene- India 
trated in all directions by the modern modes of travel and com- 
munication, so that the available service of the missionary is 
extended to fifteen hundred years in length. He is able to reach in 
travel in his thirty years as many as he could reach without these 
appliances in fifteen hundred years. India by a new and ruling 
people is permeated with the spirit of a new life and new race, 
and by her presses and publications she multiplies the power and 
instruction of her missionaries and teachers a thousandfold, or 
ten thousandfold. This India, with her hundreds of millions, calls 
us, with thousands upon thousands asking for the Bible and wait- 
ing for the Christian sacraments. In the district of a single 
presiding elder ten thousand souls have made personal request 
for baptism, to whom the Church cannot respond, because she 
cannot find the four dollars a month to feed the readers, "the 
holders up," to teach these people the word of God. Here is one 
of our opportunities. Talk about chances to work in the vineyard. 
Talk about investments that will pay a hundred per cent. If only Good 
the Church would open her eyes! This great opportunity, this Investments 
great whitening harvest, has grown up from the long decades of 
scattering the seed of the kingdom. She has the right of the 
divine call to this field, she has the right of original investment. 
Her duty is measured only by the measure of her abilities. 

These fields must be handled in detail by men who have prayed 
and toiled over them by the span of their lives, and have given to 
them the glory of their manhood. I hasten to call your attention 
to China, the world's great field. 



78 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



God's 
Emphasis 
upon China 



An Ancient 
Nation 



If God had undertaken to rivet the attention of the world upon 
China he could not have done more in this regard than he has 
done. The uninspired human mind can hardly conceive of a 
solitary additional mark of emphasis. Every startling thing that 
we can conceive as suited for such a purpose has been substantially 
paralleled and set forth before our very eyes. Tell the story of 
this divine challenge to the world's attention to China in the 
simplest and most matter-of-fact way, in the plainest prose, and 
give it to strangers as Homer's Iliad and the Old Testament 
are given to us, and they would say it is a collection of poetical 
inspirations and ballads sung by wandering minstrels, as some 
people characterize the epics of Homer, or that it was a collection 
of myths, as some skeptics characterize the books of Moses. Do 
you want hoary antiquity to awaken your veneration toward the 
actors? The principal figure on the stage is the oldest nation of 
the world, a people that was an ancient people many centuries 
before there was any Saxon, or Briton, or Gaul, or Goth, or 
Vandal, or Roman, or Greek; a people that were swarming out 
of that old hive of the race, Mongolia, and coming down through 
the Hankow Pass before Abraham was called or the pyramids 
were built. Do you want long lines of individual pedigrees to 
enrich and make the bluest blood known among men ? Here you 
have individual pedigrees that rise in the ages in unbroken line 
for more than forty centuries. Do you want veneration for 
learning? Here you have people that have had competitive lit- 
erary examinations for office for more than four thousand years, 
and that can to-day furnish from a single town more than ten 
thousand competitors for a literary prize. Do you want practical 
economies and tireless industries? Here you meet a people that 
can take three crops a year from the same soil, and leave it as 
rich as they found it, and can support in comparative comfort 
twice as many people to the square mile as are famishing in the 
valley of the Ganges. Do you want the cumulative interest that 
inheres In vast numbers of one genus or race under one govern- 
ment? Here you have hosts that far exceed the combined hosts 
of all the Americas, and all the English and Scotch and Irish, and 
and all the Germans of the great German empire,and all the Rus- 
sians of the vast Russian empire, and all the hosts of all the 
kingdoms of Europe, all put together. Do you want ancient and 
crowded altars, where immortals feel after God, if haply they 



OUR OPPORTUNITY 79 

may find him? Here are faiths old as the traditions of the race, 
and single characters worshiped by more people than ever re- 
peated in prayer any other name ever known among men. Surely 
this Peking tragedy, on the very top of the world, in the very face 
of the sun, and before the very eyes of every civilized human 
being, calls the world's attention to China. God Almighty has 
struck the world with the hammer of his eternal purpose, to 
awaken us from our lethargy. He is saying, "Awake, thou that 
sleepest, and see your task, your burden, your opportunity, and 
your possible glory." If any event or series of events in known 
history may be regarded as providential, surely we are safe in so 
regarding the recent events in China. 

The deep needs of China constitute her strongest claim. As a China's Needs 
mother gives her closest attention to her sickest child, turns from 
her prattling darlings to the one struggling for life in the grip of 
the fever, feeling that that one needs her most, so the great heart 
of God yearns most tenderly over China, on account of her fierce 
and threatening maladies, her extreme necessities. 

This man in his delirium dismisses his physician, drives away 
his nurses, and pitches his medicine into the sewer. This splash 
of energy does not demonstrate that he does not need medicine 
and nurses and physicians. It rather demonstrates that he has 
the greatest possible need of them. The worst type of sin, the 
most perilous condition of the sinner, is that described in the 
Scriptures as being "seared with a hot iron." When a man is 
contented in his depravity then he has gone beyond the ordinary 
redemptive agencies. Then God must hasten after him the 
strongest angels of his afflicting providence, and strike him where 
he lives. So it is with nations and peoples and races. China has 
many signs of this extreme lostness, this seared numbness. 

Her conceit and vanity and ignorance shut out the truth, eclipse Her 
the sun of knowledge, and wall up the gates of progress. She has ^ent° ntent ' 
been so contented with herself that nothing better could be de- 
sired. Their teachers declare their "moral code the best the 
human mind can formulate." All classes believe this as firmly as 
we believe in the law of gravitation. It is to them as certain as 
any law of nature. One of their great emperors, a thousand years 
ago, said, "The teaching of the sages is adapted to the Chinese 
as water is adapted to fish." The relation of the Chinese to the 
sages is 'that of fish to water ; when one dries up the other dies. 



80 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

It is taught to the people that foreigners come from a remote and 
barren and narrow corner of the earth, where they can produce 
neither tea leaves nor rhubarb; without tea leaves they have 
nothing to drink, without rhubarb they are absolutely unable to 
digest their food. They spread upon their fans maps of the 
world, in which China covers four fifths of the fan, and the other 
fifth is assigned to the English, French, and Mohammedans. 
Their defenses are strengthened by the wooden shutters in the 
windows over their city gates, and these are decorated with paint- 
ings representing the muzzles of cannon. One sees on the sides 
of their boats near the prows painted eyes. Sitting on the deck 
of a house-boat, going up the Peiho one day, I let my limbs hang 
over the side of the boat. They hung over these painted eyes. 
Soon the boatmen refused to pull because the boat could not see 
where to go. 

The Rule of The ruling spirit over China is the dragon. It is active in the 

e ragon £ en ^ gj^ This means the spirit of the earth, the sea, and the 
air. It is the embodiment of all superstition. One of the great 
departments of government is this department of feng shui; it 
has a great secretary in government council like the Secretary of 
State or of War. Its business is to fix upon lucky days for all 
the movements and actions of the emperor, and of all others down 
to the poorest cooly; it fixes the places for graves, for houses, 
for windows, for chimneys, for everything everywhere. It has 
a service ramified throughout the empire. Nothing goes on with- 
out the approval of these officers, which is secured by fees. On 
one of our buildings that once stood in the old compound in 
Peking I saw a short chimney, perhaps ten inches above the roof. 
It was cut off by the feng shui. One of the feng shui officers 
told a man whose door was just opposite this chimney, when it 
was the size of the other chimneys, that unless that chimney was 
shortened he would never have any male children. So our people 
cut down the chimney rather than have it taken down by a mob. 

Conceit This ignorance and superstition is equaled only by their conceit. 

They despise and dislike all who are not Chinese. They do not 
want contact with the foreign devils. It was a great triumph of 
diplomacy when an embassy was received by China from the 
United States. President Polk, in the late forties, sent John W. 
Davis as our Minister to China, and the President informs "his 
great and good friend," the emperor, that Mr. Davis is to bear 



OUR OPPORTUNITY 8 1 

good wishes to him and "be near your majesty." It is instructive 
to know that Mr. Davis was received at Canton and kept there, 
with all other diplomats, about a thousand miles from Peking. 
No profane person must ever approach the emperor. 

This dislike of all foreigners is equaled by their utter lack of 
patriotism, the religion of the state, and their deadness to public 
interest. In the war with Japan torpedoes were placed in the Min 
River for the protection of Foochow. When the war was over 
and the torpedoes were removed it was found that some one had 
filled the torpedoes with coal dirt and ashes and had kept the 
money furnished for powder. War vessels sent for the defense 
of Shanghai were useless, because the officers had sold off the new 
cannon and rapid-firing guns and had substituted wooden guns. 

There was pointed out to me a man who had a contract to clean 
out a certain long sewer in Foochow, that had long been utterly Dishonesty 
filled. The officers went to inspect the work. The contractor 
was required to go through the sewer, entering at one end and 
coming out at the other. He entered the sewer and started 
through it. The officers walked through the street over the sewer 
and looked for the man to come out at the other end of the sewer. 
In a few moments the officers saw him come out. They were 
satisfied and paid over the money. They did not observe that it 
was the contractor's brother who came out of the sewer. The 
government and officials were beaten and nobody cared. 

Some English officers practicing on a gunboat on the Yang-tse Official 
accidentally knocked a hole in the wall of one of the cities along Corru J? tness 
the river. They were alarmed, and asked a mandarin, that is, an 
officer, who was on the gunboat with them how they could settle 
the matter. They did not care to be dismissed by England. The 
mandarin said, "That is easy ; settle anything in China with cash." 
The officers chipped in eight hundred taels, about a thousand dol- 
lars, and sent the mandarin ashore to settle. At night he returned, 
saying, "It is all settled, all right." The officers were pleased. 
Some time afterward the officers learned that the mandarin called 
the principal men of the town together and told them that unless 
they gave him two thousand taels by four o'clock he would have 
their city leveled with the ground. They raised the money and 
he returned happy. The deep want of such a people cannot be 
measured. The very foundations of moral government must be 
laid in them. 
6 



82 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Lostness 



No 
Compromise 



Roman 
Catholicism 



The depravity and lostness of China are far beyond any civilized 
human conception. Unaided by the Lord no human faith and 
ability could handle such a problem. But God's ways are not like 
our ways. He does not look for our righteousness. He knows 
that that is filthy rags. He does not feel for our strength. He 
knows that that is perfect weakness. 

God simply asks do we need him. Our utter helplessness is 
the prevailing cry that pierces his ear. When we owe ten thou- 
sand talents and have nothing to pay, then he is drawn by the 
magnetism of our lostness and freely forgives us all. When we 
are naked and famine-stricken, and look toward him, then he 
meets us afar off, puts upon us the robe and the ring, and hugs 
us into patrimony and sonship. The most startling cry that ever 
rang through the universe since the agonizing wail on Mount 
Calvary is the concentrated cry going up out of the unmeasured 
need of China. It has the lungs of an almighty want. It pierces 
the ear of God, and it penetrates the deepest recesses of his aching 
heart. It drives the tides of his redeeming mercy over the shore- 
less ocean of his infinite love. It is this bottomless wretchedness 
of China that extorts the agonizing command from the purple 
lips of Christ, "Go ye into all the world." 

Christianity enters a country challenging every superstition and 
defying all the false gods. She has no compromise. She cannot 
sit down in any pantheon. Everything must yield to her. When 
the ark of the covenant enters a temple all the idols must fall on 
their faces and go into fragments. She cannot accommodate 
herself to ancestral worship. While she says, "Honor thy father 
and thy mother," she cannot for one moment tolerate the worship 
of father and mother. She cannot help support tHe feasts and 
theatrical performances for the honor or support of idolatry. She 
can hardly take a step in any direction that she does not an- 
tagonize some superstition. It is not strange that her representa- 
tives should soon be marked as enemies to the convictions of the 
common people. It is only natural that persecution should mark 
the history of every advance of Christianity. It is to the glory 
of mission work in China that China is no exception to this law. 

This hostility has been greatly increased by the assumptions 
and political ambitions of the Roman Catholic officials. Their 
bishops have assumed the rank of princes. They are carried by 
four bearers dressed like the bearers of high state officials. They 



OUR OPPORTUNITY 83 

demand the same public consideration. Chinese justice is peculiar Chinese 
and uncertain. An English resident of China gave me this inci- Justice 
dent : A Chinese friend of his came to him in great distress, say- 
ing, "The taotai (governor) demands the eight thousand taels 
he loaned me. Now, he never loaned me a single cash. I fear I 
am ruined." The Englishman meeting him a few weeks later 
asked him how he came out with the taotai. He replied, "I beat 
him. I went into court, admitted the debt, and proved that I had 
paid it." The Catholic Church has established in every principal 
mission center a court for hearing and determining all cases where 
its members are concerned. The perversity and crookedness of 
Chinese justice is so marked and general that this extra-terri- 
torial jurisdiction seems necessary. The Church naturally secures 
the services of men best versed in Chinese law to manage these 
cases. As wild ducks will soon learn the line near towns where 
shooting is prohibited and seek shelter within these lines, so the 
natives specially needing immunity from the execution of justice 
soon drift into these refuges and conform to the required cere- 
monies for the needed immunity. Thus this imperium in imperio 
soon becomes a center of irritation. Officers prevented from pun- 
ishing criminals come to regard these asylums for criminals, as 
dangerous bandits, menaces to the good order of the state. Thus 
it happens that in the settlement of the most alarming extremities 
to which the Boxer riots brought the Chinese government, one 
of the six items insisted upon by the Chinese in the settlement 
was that the Christian Churches should not admit to and retain 
in their folds notoriously bad characters. Slow to distinguish 
between foreigners, as we may be slow to distinguish between 
the Chinese of different provinces, or between different individual 
Chinese men, the people looked upon all foreigners as under the 
same condemnation. The causes of irritation being always pres- 
ent, a possible outburst was always a standing menace. 

In the face of all this prolonged irritation came a pressure from Greed of the 
the great Powers that was too heavy not to produce wide results. 
The greed and aggressiveness of the Powers was urged by most 
imperative motives, the struggles for supremacy and almost for 
existence. When your Ohio and Pennsylvania men laid pig iron 
and steel rails down in Liverpool and Berlin and Paris at a profit, 
you opened the eyes of the Powers. They must have cheap coal 
or go to the rear and yield commercial supremacy to the United 



8 4 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Rush for 
Territory 



States. Hence the almost simultaneous rush for the control of 
the great coal fields of China. Your furnaces made it hot for 
China more than our missionaries. The Boxer troubles were only 
the foam on the surface of a great undercurrent of mightier 
forces. Russia became possessed of Port Arthur, with a sphere 
of influence embracing Manchuria and reaching well down toward 
Peking, as an objective point from which the practical supremacy 
of Russia over China was to be secured. Germany was reaching 
out over Shantung. France was closing her hands over the three 
provinces of Kuangsi, Yunnan, and Kueichou, with a greed that 
stretched far across the continent to Szchuen. England from 
Shanghai, where she widened her holdings, extended her sphere 
of influence up the Yang-tse valley. Japan from her footing on 
the island of Formosa counted upon the control of the Fukien 
Province, which fronted Formosa. Even Italy, with only a germ 
of possible commerce, wanted Sanmen port and the Chekiang 
Province. Only one real and suitable port was to be left to China 
herself. Twenty great railroads, backed by rich concessions and 
padded with Chinese capital, were projected throughout the 
Chinese empire, from the borders of Siberia to the borders of 
Tibet, and down to the tropical forests of Burma. Fifteen of the 
eighteen provincial capitals were thus made tributary to the 
foreigners. The public and world-wide discussion of "the parti- 
tion of China," "the breaking up of the Chinese empire," and 
such themes quite extensively translated for Chinese officials, 
and filtered into the Chinese convictions, made a nightmare too 
heavy and alarming for the continued slumber of the heathen 
giant. He groaned and rolled on his hard bed, and started to his 
feet in alarm. He looked about him for some way of escape or 
defense, for something tangible to strike. 

A vast literary antichristian propaganda was put in motion, 
consisting of books, pamphlets, placards, and illustrated sheets 
called "The Picture Gallery," repeating and multiplying the 
popular calumnies against the Christians, parodying their doc- 
trines, giving deformed fragments of Brahmanism, Buddhism, 
Mohammedanism, and the teachings of the secret sects of China, 
with a profuseness of vileness in illustration only possible to an 
imagination steeped in the pollution of sixty centuries of heathen 
licentiousness. These were multiplied by the million, and given 
to all who would take them. Printing and circulating them was 



OUR OPPORTUNITY 85 

a work of merit. With these were sent lists and statements of the 
massacres of Christians, and wild appeals to the people to kill the 
foreign pig-goat devils and wipe out the devils' religion. The 
magazine was widely and deeply laid under the empire. It only 
awaited a spark. That spark came from headquarters. 

In 1898, three years after the Japanese war, the emperor en- a Career of 
tered upon a career of reform never surpassed in any country or Reform 
government, and hardly equaled by the revolutions wrought by 
Peter the Great in Russia, or by the emperor of Japan in 1867. 
The disasters inflicted by little Japan compelled many advanced 
men in China to reflect ; among them the emperor was awakened 
to the situation. As the czar said after the Crimean war, "Russia 
does not sulk, she meditates," so the emperor of China did not 
sulk, but he meditated. He was profoundly impressed with the 
antiquated and factitious condition of the empire. He began a 
most astonishing series of imperial edicts to clear away the effete 
customs and useless appliances of the government. He forbade 
all extortion in raising money, asked for a loan to which no one 
should subscribe unless he wanted so to invest his money. He 
asked the viceroys to recommend men the best qualified for 
foreign ministers, regardless of rank. He started to reorganize 
the army after the best Western models, and arm them with 
modern arms. He said: "Our scholars are now without solid 
practical education ; our artisans are without scientific instructors. 
Does anyone think that in our present condition he can really say, 
with any truth, that our men are as well drilled and as well led 
as those of any of the foreign armies, or that we can successfully 
stand against any of them?" He abolished the literary essay as 
the standard for literary examinations. He ordered the establish- 
ment of a national university, with colleges in the provinces, as 
feeders. He ordered that Western science should be counted in 
examination for literary degrees ; foreign teachers were to be 
employed to teach the sciences. The temples, except those built 
as memorials, should be kept for schools for the new learning. New 
All this meant the complete revolution of the empire from the old Learnin 8" 
obsolete customs to the new practical training, suited to modern 
times. The nation was surprised and almost breathless. But 
there was a large minority of the scholars that were ready to wel- 
come the new life. In almost every provincial capital and open 
port book depots were established for the supply of standard liter- 



86 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Breaking 

Down 

Prejudice 



Satan's 
Activity 



Demoniacal 
Possessions 



ature ; books, educational, scientific, and religious magazines, and 
newspapers were published and circulated; lectures were de- 
livered and libraries started. Prejudices were broken down and 
hatred was overcome. The movement was leavening the thought 
and molding the minds of the upper classes. Even in the remote 
capital of Hsi-An-Fu books were purchased by all classes, from 
the governor to the humblest scholar. The literati embraced the 
new learning. The aristocracy formed classes and invited the 
foreigner to give them "the light of his learning." Foreigners 
were invited to visit the Confucian colleges and publicly explain 
the secret of the success and the source of the energy of the Chris- 
tian nations. The emperor said he was seeking to bring China 
upon a level with the great Western nations, and asked his people 
to sympathize with the movement and hear the foreign teachers. 
Everything was moving forward toward the regeneration of 
China. Deliverance from the old order and from the old super- 
stitions was at the door. The long campaign of the missionaries 
seemed about to reach glorious victory. Suddenly we confront 
the fiercest opposition and most bloody persecution of modern 
times. 

The struggle for the regeneration of China was a part of the 
irrepressible conflict. The great enemy is not dead. He never 
willingly abandons one inch of his territory. He must be driven 
back at the hardest, either in the individual heart or in the field 
of the world. Every advance of the forces of righteousness 
awakens Satan's activity. The conquest of the world is the sub- 
jugation of a rebellious province in the moral government. 
Whenever we see the Church putting on her strength and beauty 
we must expect to encounter the forces of evil at their worst. 

The Scriptures declare this strife. The powers of darkness 
have long had dominion in this world. The conflict of the ages 
has been to overthrow them. Whenever there has been any 
special movement among the forces of righteousness there have 
been special demonstrations among the evil forces. In New 
Testament times demoniacal possessions were common. Every- 
where Jesus went he encountered these enemies. They recognized 
his character and mission. They would cry out, "I know thee; 
thou art the Son of the living God." At the marked turns in the 
life of Jesus he had special conflicts with the devil. When he 
reached the turn in his earthly career, when he went into his 



OUR OPPORTUNITY 87 

divine mission and was entering upon his ministry, then he was 
led away into the wilderness by the Spirit, to be tempted of the 
devil. When his work was well advanced so he could send out 
seventy to preach his presence and power, the disciples returned, 
saying, "Even the devils are subject unto us in thy name." That 
was a great forward movement ; the powers of the spiritual king- 
dom could be handled by men. The kingdom of darkness could 
now be overthrown. Men, mortal men, had become so matured 
in spiritual warfare that even the devils must yield to them, must 
make way for them. Jesus counted that a great victory. He 
said, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." Once 
when Jesus prayed, "Father, glorify thy name," there came a voice 
from heaven saying, "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it 
again. . . . Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the 
prince of this world be cast out." (John xii, 28-31.) 

When Christianity is introduced into a heathen country with Opposition to 
power, then the devil comes to the public attention, and men seem wtianity 
to act as if possessed of the devil, act as they did in New Testa- 
ment times. 

When the Baptists went into Burma, and that remarkable work 
of grace was started, their missionaries encountered the same 
opposition ; men acted as they did of old, when possessed of the 
devil. In the Foochow Conference, when I held it sixteen years 
ago, there were demonstrations of evil possession similar to those 
recorded in the New Testament. It had been the greatest year 
the missions had ever had. I spent two days with interpreters, 
examining the native preachers concerning these strange phe- 
nomena. They agreed almost exactly with statements of the New 
Testament. When a case developed to disturb the society or its 
members the pastor would call the presiding elder and the official 
men together to pray over the victims. They would pray in the Response to 
name of Jesus and order the evil spirit to depart, and the spirit rayer 
would depart, and the victim would be quiet, clothed, and in his 
right mind. I will repeat one of many cases. A woman, whose 
husband was an earnest Christian, came with him into the church 
as a seeker. Her mother died. She wanted a heathen funeral. 
The husband wanted a Christian funeral ; she became violent, 
smashed up the furniture, and could not be restrained. The man 
sent for a cousin of the woman. This cousin was a professional 
wrestler, a man of enormous size and strength. She said to her 



88 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Boxer 
Excitement 



The Empress 
Dowager 



husband: "I know what you have done; you have sent for my 
cousin ; he is coming ; I see him over the mountain. He will be 
here in about an hour ; you see what I will do to him." She was 
a small woman, not weighing ninety pounds ; the wrestler was a 
giant and trained in rough and tumble wrestling. When he came 
in she seized him and doubled him up and threw him out of the 
house, and over the fence. The pastor and official members came 
together and prayed over her, and ordered the evil spirit out of 
her in the name of Jesus, and she was quiet from that hour. It is 
the irrepressible conflict running through all the ages. The Boxer 
trouble seems like another manifestation of the same hostility that 
has been encountered everywhere. 

Groups of girls from twelve to twenty, the time when accord- 
ing to Chinese custom and all common sense girls need special 
seclusion and care, dressed in red throughout, going to the temple 
to exercise in the Boxers' drill with low men of the ruder sort, 
singing their incantations till they are w T ild, crying, "Kill, kill," 
and clutching swords and any weapons and trying to kill anybody 
within reach — these groups, running from village to village 
among an ignorant and superstitious people, are firebrands well 
calculated to spread the excitement. It is not strange that they 
proved good instruments for Satan's use. When the Boxers 
under their excitement had passed through the trance state they 
believed themselves invulnerable to sword or spear or bullet. 
This superstitious acceptance of the supposed supernatural spirit 
operated powerfully upon all classes. Even the empress dowager, 
in the great council of her princes, maintained that these trained 
Boxers were invulnerable to bullet or sword or spear. Prince 
Yuan said: "Yesterday I saw the ground before the legation 
defenses thickly strewn with dead bodies of their leaders. It is 
impossible that they are invulnerable." She interrupted him, 
saying, "The bodies you saw must have been not Boxers, but out- 
laws." This infection, with such indorsement, spread rapidly. 
Crime became the instinct. The people, especially the lower 
classes, had a delirium of cruelty and slaughter. Satan reigned 
supreme. The objective point of his campaign was the death of 
all Christians and the utter wiping out of all Christianity. 

The reform edicts by the emperor made him the center of a 
work of righteousness. He was calling about him advanced men. 
The old conservative men were being retired and dismissed. This 



OUR OPPORTUNITY 89 

compacted them about the empress dowager. The emperor knew 
the opposition he had to overcome. He was aware of the machi- 
nations of the empress dowager. He relied upon one of his Reliance 
generals, Yuan Shih Kai, at the head of twelve thousand five general 
hundred soldiers, who had been drilled by a German master, and 
were the most reliable of all soldiers, to keep the empress dowager 
in her palace. But his general betrayed him. The empress dow- 
ager assembled the powerful relatives, and demanded the abdica- 
tion of the emperor. The aggressions of the Powers trying to 
partition China inspired the conservatives and gave them powerful 
arguments, and alarmed the progressive friends of the emperor. 
In the critical hour he was deserted. The conservatives came to 
the front. The empress dowager seized the emperor's signet ring, 
the emperor was imprisoned, the advanced men were chased out 
of China or killed, the edicts for reform were nullified, the enemies 
of the foreigners were placed in power, the Boxers were encour- 
aged by the empress dowager, the missionaries were killed or 
driven to places of refuge, their native -converts were butchered, 
and the clock of Chinese progress was stopped for a season — but 
only for a season. As one of the advisers of the emperor, with 
five noble, able, and patriotic young companions, was seized and 
executed, he said, "We can easily be slain, but multitudes of others 
will arise to take our places." The day of their execution, Sep- 
tember 28, 1898, will yet be celebrated by the patriots of redeemed 
China as the "Day of the Six Martyrs." 

The disturbances and Boxer persecutions furnish most encour- signs of Hope 
aging signs. As the demons, when ordered out of their victims 
by the Saviour, would sometimes tear and wound their victims 
before coming out, so this delirium of rage indicates the pressure 
of great spiritual power that precipitates and intensifies the con- 
flict. Satan, seeing that his reign is short, rages. We can see 
that the forces of righteousness are neither dead nor sleeping. 
Already signs of hope are seen in the earth and streams of light 
are illumining the Eastern sky. The strong hand of the Christian 
nations has been felt. The emperor in a critical and decisive 
council of the Chinese princes, protesting against the policy of 
the empress dowager and the conservatives, cried out, "If China 
is to fight the world, will it not put an end to China ?" The great- 
ness of the Powers has been felt. The conviction of the emperor 
has taken possession of the people; their feelings are greatly 



90 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Coming 
of a Great 
Change 



Argument of 
Sacrifice 



changed. The experiences that followed the Sepoy mutiny have 
been repeated. There before the war the lowest servant could 
insult a foreigner, but after the victories of General Havelock it 
was impossible to mass enough natives to resist a single squad of 
British soldiers. Dr. Butler was in the great bazaar in Calcutta ; 
it was crowded with throngs of natives. Two British soldiers 
entered the bazaar, when the natives fled in utmost terror. In a 
moment they had all vanished. Half a century has failed to 
resuscitate the old insolent spirit. So it is now in China. Before 
the capture of Peking, the flight of the imperial family and court, 
and the punishment of the Boxer leaders, children or coolies were 
bold to insult foreign pig-goat devils, but now a great change has 
come over them ; a great light has shone in upon those who sat in 
darkness. Before the fall of the Boxers the word "foreign" was 
so odious that it had to be taken off from every article of com- 
merce or trade that could not be dispensed with. Foreign drilling 
had to be called "fine cloth," foreign rifles "knobbed guns," 
foreign matches "quick fire," and foreign things that were indis- 
pensable had to be rechristened. After the capture the Chinese 
were eagerly and ostentatiously seeking and wearing foreign 
clothes ; all classes learned the military salute ; the smallest chil- 
dren performed the salute before everyone passing by. Even 
beggar women covered one eye, taking that for the proper salute. 

There is a still deeper and more abiding influence working 
among the people of all classes. The age-long argument of 
sacrifice that has never been unhitched from its legitimate con- 
clusion results in lifting China to higher levels. It is still true, 
as in the days of Roman emperors, that the blood of the martyrs is 
the seed of the Church. The lives and deaths of the native Chris- 
tians were exhibited before men and angels. The native Christians 
were not considered by the foreign soldiers in Peking as any 
part of their charge. No provision was made for their protection 
or safety. True, they were butchered at sight everywhere, but 
the foreign officials did not assume or feel any responsibility for 
them. The missionaries threw over them their shield, and made 
room for them in the sacred inclosures of the legation grounds. 
It was soon found that they were not like other Chinese. While 
heathen servants fled on the approach of danger, these men and 
women stayed by their friends. They took their turn by the loop- 
holes with the guns. They stood guard in dangerous places. 



Native 
Christians 



OUR OPPORTUNITY 91 

They toiled in all kinds of hard service without a murmur. They 
made the continuance of the defense possible. Even the Japanese 
heartily commended them, and the common soldiers felt that some 
great change had been wrought in them. It became a general 
conviction that unless these had stayed within the legation de- 
fenses none had been saved. 

The fidelity of the native Christians is a world-wide wonder. Fidelity of 
Some servants sent away to places of safety returned on the eve 
of a riot, saying simply, "I heard that you were to be attacked 
to-night, and I thought I ought to be here to help you." When 
missionaries had been robbed and were destitute, in the midst of 
murderous enemies, the native Christians would hunt them up 
and give them what money they had, one saying, "As long as I 
have anything, of course I will share it with you." A native Bap- 
tist Christian in Shansi was taken to see the missionaries die ; as 
they approached the hiding place, though certain it would cost 
him his life, he cried out, giving warning to his pastor, and was 
instantly struck down. The manner in which the native Chris- 
tians endured torture and met death was a perpetual surprise to 
their persecutors. Converts gave the greatest testimony ; teacher 
Lieu, of Fenchou Fu, sat quietly fanning himself as he was ex- 
pecting the murderers, and he met them and death with a smile. 

When the Boxers visited a village they ordered the people to The Pathos 
point out the Christians, and this was promptly done to save them- ° artyr om 
selves. The Christians, set off by themselves, their heathen 
neighbors being either afraid to befriend them or willing to share 
in the loot, would gather at their little chapels. The Boxers would 
surround them and press in upon them; the murderers would 
offer them life if they would deny Jesus, or bow to the idols. 
There they are. See them, the Christians, men, women, and 
children, all crowded together. Look at them : there they stand. 
The little girls are clinging to their mother ; the Boxers bind the 
father, and say, "Deny Jesus or we will kill you." The father 
shakes his head ; the mother cries, "Spaie my children." A rough, 
bloody man, with a knife in his hand, seizes a little girl twelve 
years old, and tears her away from the mother. She springs for 
her darling. The man asks, "Will you deny? will you deny?" 
She cries, "O Lord Jesus, help; I cannot deny." The brute 
tramples the little thing under his feet, rips open her body, tears 
out the still beating heart, crowds it into the mother's mouth, say- 



92 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

ing, "If you will not deny your Jesus, take that." The fiends cut 
and slash the crying children, while the parents say, "Lord, help 
and save." The mother is knocked down and dragged around 
by the fiends before the helpless husband and father, who prays, 
"Lord Jesus, receive us, while we witness for thee, thy humble 
servants." They bind him to a post and hack away his flesh little 
by little. He stands before his tortured and murdered family and 
dies, saying, "Lord Jesus, have mercy on them, and help them to 
see thee and thy truth." A single word would have saved his 
children and his wife and his own life, but he would not utter 
that word. It was not strange that these persecutors should, as 
was often done to others, cut out this man's heart and examine it 
to find the secret of his heroism and devotion. Jesus Christ is 
preached in that village and will be forever ; he is there in person ; 
it is not possible for him to be absent when his heroic children are 
bearing such testimony, and are ascending to the martyr's throne. 
Hear him say, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of 
the world." I can see him crowding past the murderers, soothing 
into numbness the nerves of the little girl and her mates, giving 
The Comfort- infinite comfort to the mother as she sees him soothing her 
ing ns darlings; and I see him steadying the courage of the father 

as he opens before him and his family heaven and eternal blessed- 
ness, and whispers to him, "It is granted unto you and yours 
to enter into my sufferings, and to make up something of my 
sufferings that are behind in the world's redemption." 
This sacrifice was repeated in China two thousand times during 
those weeks while our missionaries were manning the barracks 
yonder in Peking. I have thought Jesus was absent from court 
those weeks, and his tall and swift angels were busy those weeks 
bearing home those blood-washed saints. Those were gala days 
in the home city. I hear the sentinel angels shout, "Here they 
come with another group," and the patriarchs and the prophets 
and apostles sweep out as the great gates of the city swing wide 
open to bid them welcome. I hear St. John say, "Come, you 
children; you did not know much of the great studies of the 
Church on earth, but you did know that the Son of man hath 
power on earth to forgive sins, and you have come up out of great 
tribulation and have washed your robes, and made them white in 
the blood of yonder Lamb. Join the great company which no man 
can number, and enter into the joy of your Lord." 



OUR OPPORTUNITY 93 

The great argument from these martyrdoms has permeated the a New 
Chinese mind to its darkest recesses. The Spirit of God has ^S 11116 
burned these great sermons into the convictions of all classes. A 
judgment throne has been set up in each man's conscience. The 
old systems are weighed in the balance and found wanting. The 
sentence of the Supreme Judge has doomed the idolatries to death. 
The conservative leaders have been superseded. The large 
minorities of progressive scholars and statesmen are asserting 
themselves. The empress dowager, avenged on her personal 
enemies, freed from the Boxer leaders, impressed with nearness 
and greatness of the Christian nations, surrounded by better ad- 
visers, is entering upon the work of reform. She is taking up the 
role of the dethroned emperor ; by edict she is promulgating the 
great reforms in education. Universities and colleges will be 
created. Christian men are being sought as teachers. Clubs of 
scholars are being organized to cultivate and spread Western 
knowledge. Multitudes are inquiring into the new religion. It Multitudes of 
is estimated that many thousand Chinese are now earnestly inquir- n< l uirers 
ing concerning Christianity. All classes are feeling the great 
argument that has been made in their presence. The spiritual 
lethargy of centuries is being disturbed. These fierce upheavals, 
that seem to threaten the very existence of society itself, are only 
the crude displays of spiritual forces. It is an old law asserting 
itself. The very persecutions that have strengthened the Church 
in all ages are bearing the richest fruit. China is wide open. By 
all the breadth of her vast territory, by all the length of her un- 
measured antiquity, by all the millions of her uncounted hosts, by 
all her cruel and bloody superstitions, by all the loathsome 
abominations of her unregenerated heathenism, by all the anguish 
of God's Son in yonder garden and all his agony on yonder cross, 
by all the tides that sweep across the shoreless sea of God's infinite 
love, and by the surging sorrows in his aching heart, he calls upon 
us, saying, "The doors are wide open, enter in and possess the 
land. Lo, I will go with you and encamp about you, and nothing 
shall by any means harm you ; I am with you alway, and will 
bring you off more than conqueror. O, my America ! what have 
I not done for you ? I have saved you from baptized heathenism. 
I have kept you from the great superstitions. I have lifted you 
to the very heavens in the widest freedom. I have enriched you 
with more than half the world's wealth. I have exalted you to 



94 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Day of 
Opportunity 



the highest seat in the world's great council. I have poured upon 
you the full light of wisdom till your daughters are the brides of 
princes and your sons are the counselors of kings. What more 
could I do for you ? O, my Methodism, I turn to you in this day 
of opportunity. I have called you out of darkness. I have in- 
trusted you with my most secret wish. I have commissioned you 
to proclaim a knowable salvation. I have multiplied your num- 
bers beyond all precedent. I have crowded your borders with 
schools and colleges, and have rilled your homes with scholars and 
believers. I have thrust upon you the blessings of both earth and 
heaven. Now I turn to you. I call upon you ; arise, put on your 
strength ; follow me into these wide open fields. Do not let these 
doors of opportunity shut in your face. I will go with you. Bring 
ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in 
mine house, and prove me now if I will not open the windows of 
heaven and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room 
enough to receive it. I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and 
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. And it shall come 
to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be 
saved, and a nation shall be born in a day." O God, if thou canst 
forgive our unbelief and our stumbling at the exceeding greatness 
and preciousness of thy promises, our ease in Zion, our lack of 
sacrifices for the cause for which thou hast sacrificed thy Son — if 
thou wilt forgive all our sins we will do better; we will follow 
wherever thou wilt lead. 



A Wide- 
spread 
Message 



"THE WORDS ARE SPIRIT AND LIFE" 

The Rev. W. I. Haven, D.D. 

"The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are 
life." Where are these wonderful words of our Lord and 
Saviour? Where are these words that he gave to the multitude 
that was hungry for bread ? Where are these words that he gave 
to a populace that was eager to make him a king? They passed 
out into the Syrian air, where are they? I know that John 
Ruskin says that it is not adequate to describe the Holy Scriptures 
as the word of God ; that the word of God is something 
mightier, living in the life of the universe, and revealing itself 
in all the life of the Church. But I make no mistake when I say 



THE BIBLE AT THE HEART OF MISSIONS 95 

that, guided by the Holy Spirit, those words that passed out on 
that Eastern atmosphere were gathered up by inspired men and 
placed within the covers of this volume that the centuries have, 
not without good reason, called the word of God. 

And what a theme it would be to speak to you this morning of The Bible and 
this word as spirit and life in all the activities of mankind. But 
I have a simple theme — "The Relation of the Bible to the Heart of 
Christian Missions." The Bible has been a mighty factor in 
Christian missions, because the Bible is charged with a world- 
consciousness. I know there are those that pretend to love and 
read the Bible who never look outside the circle of their own 
home or their own parish, but I have to doubt at this mo- 
ment whether they are really lovers of the word of God. 
For the open Bible is an open window unto all the earth. 
There is no book like it. It says, "The earth is filled with the 
glory of God." It says, "The shields of the earth belong unto 
God." It says that "God so loved the world that he gave his only 
begotten Son." And there is that upper room where the group 
of disciples is gathered around the Saviour, and at that hour 
Jesus, bowing down, prays these remarkable words, "Father, as 
thou has sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into 
the world." I have recently come across a statement that beauti- 
fully illustrates this world-consciousness of the Bible. They say 
that the paper out of which the choicest Bibles are made is 
manufactured from the sails of ships that have mellowed their 
sails in every clime; and so the book itself given to mankind 
on this paper is filled with the atmosphere of all seas and all 
lands. 

In this book there is, too, a description of the world-need. 
"The whole world lieth in wickedness." And in this book there 
is the world command, "Go ye out into all the world and disciple 
all nations." 

It therefore is not strange that the Bible has been the one An Inspira- 
volume out of which the great missionaries of the Church have 10n 
received their inspiration to service. I believe if you could look 
into the heart of every missionary that has vitally touched this 
world, you would find that there has been at the beginning of his 
consecration an intimate contact with the Scripture. Gilmour, of 
Mongolia, tells us that when he was graduated from college and 
when he came to the hour of decision as to where he should place 



96 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A Pastor's 
Purpose 



A Chinese 
Convert 



Direct 

Converting 

Power 



his ministry, he thought that he could do more effective work in 
the foreign field simply from prudential reasons, because there 
was only one missionary there to many thousands, while there 
were many ministers at home to few thousands. But, he said, 
prudential reasons had little to do with it, "there rang in my soul 
the message, 'Go, preach,' and the same message that said 
'Preach/ said -'Go/" 

In Norway, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, there 
was a pastor in a little village church, with his household about 
him, whose mind was beginning to be touched with a larger out- 
look. One day, thinking of Greenland and the people over there, 
his eyes fell upon the Gospel passage, "He that taketh not his 
cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me." He turned 
to his Lord and said, "I am ready, I will leave it to the time when 
my wife is ready." Not many years after, she came to her hus- 
band and said, "I am ready. Whither thou goest I will go; thy 
people shall be my people, and thy God my God." 

So it was the same with one of our earliest Christian converts 
in our Chinese mission in South China, Hu Yong Mi. He was 
troubled with doubts and fears. He went to Dr. Mackay, who 
told him that he often read his Bible upon his knees when he was 
troubled with perplexities. The Chinaman went upon his knees 
and read his Bible. He was a painter by trade, but he tells us 
that he painted with his right hand and kept the Scriptures at 
his left that he might study them while he worked. Finally he 
said, "It came to me that I must leave all other work and go and 
dedicate myself to the preaching of the Gospel, for the words 
were burned into my soul, 'Out of his belly shall flow rivers of 
living waters/ and only in that way could I fulfill that Scripture." 
For thirty years he lived and labored and rejoiced and went to 
glory, obedient to the impulse that came from the divine book. 

The Bible is at the heart of Christian missions, because the 
Bible is the great helper of the missionary in all his undertakings. 
It goes before him and prepares the way. I could exhaust every 
minute that is given me this morning, showing that the Scriptures 
themselves have direct converting power; that scattered broad- 
cast among the peoples they turn men to righteousness and per- 
suade souls to the glory of Jesus Christ our Lord. The Rev. Dr. 
Brown, a Presbyterian missionary for many years in South 
America, has recently written a volume called Latin America, 



THE BIBLE AT THE HEART OF MISSIONS Q)J 

and in it he gives this statement concerning the early work of our 
Dr. Kidder in Brazil. He says : "Dr. Kidder sent many Scriptures 
out into the country. One of these Bibles fell into the hands of 
a young man who became enough interested in it to travel sixty 
miles to a priest to try and compare it with what he called the 
official Scriptures, to see if it was like it. He got to the priest, 
and the priest said, 'If you can find the book in my house, you are 
entirely welcome to study it, but I do not know where it is.' He 
rummaged around a day or two, found the book and that his was 
sufficiently like it, and started on his journey home. Years after- Working of 
ward travelers went up into that region and found there a the Leaven 
Christian church, with members, some of whom preached regu- 
larly, some of whom cared for the sick and the poor, with a rule 
of living and doctrine that was simple and pure ; and that church 
had become the mother of other churches also, and not a Protes- 
tant missionary had ever entered that region." Mr. Tucker, of 
Brazil, has recently published a volume called The Bible in Brazil, 
and in it he tells of a presiding elder's district in that mission 
land with seven preaching stations and with more than a thousand 
converts, the whole district created by the work of the Scriptures 
sown broadcast there by the colporteurs. The Bible has convert- 
ing power. As Phillips Brooks said, "It is vital from end to end." 
I have confined myself to one country, but the record is the same 
all over the world. Bishop Parker, when he stood upon the 
platform of the Ecumenical Missionary Conference in New York, 
told the story of a young Mohammedan teacher in one of the 
government schools, who was restless and nervous one evening 
and went to a friend and said, "What shall I do?" The friend 
says, "Here is the Christian's book, you may like to read it." He 
took his New Testament and read it way into the night. That 
night was a wakeful night. The reading of that Testament led 
to his conversion. He to-day is a preacher in the Northwest 
India Conference. As the good bishop said in his address, "The seed Com of 
Bible is the seed corn of the kingdom in this land." So the Bible the Kingdom 
goes out to open up the way for the missionary. 

It is the chief instrument in the missionary's hands. Brewster, 
out in Hinghua, as Martin in India, as Judson in Burma, did not 
dare to lay the foundations without getting the Scriptures into 
the language of the people as soon as possible. So the Bible goes 
with the missionary as his chief helper and aid. 
7 



9 8 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Only 
Adequate 
Resource 



Ziegenbalg 



Livingstone 



But I want to press home another thought, namely, that the 
Scriptures lie at the heart of Christian missions, because the 
Scriptures give to the missionary his only adequate resource for 
his work and toil. We say the strength of missions is wealth, 
and we wish that the Church would pour out its wealth. But 
-what good would wealth have done to Melville Cox on the sands 
of Liberia? We say that the power of missions is a highly or- 
ganized ecclesiasticism, and we want a mighty society. But of 
what value would a mighty ecclesiasticism have been to Payton, 
when he stood with his wife alone in the Hebrides, and heard 
the cries of savages at their cannibalistic rites in the forest? 
Wealth is good, yes ; may God grant that it be poured out upon 
the altars of the Church. Ecclesiasticism is a mighty power ; may 
God grant that it may be increased. But what the missionary 
wants, when he stands alone under the stars and faces the dark- 
ness of heathenism, is the word of God that opens up to him the 
resources of infinite strength, that comes to him and says, "I the 
Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not ; 
I will help thee;" "Underneath are the everlasting arms;" "Of 
the increase of my kingdom there shall be no end;" "Lo, I am 
with you alway." I do not wonder that the missionaries are lovers 
of the Bible. I don't wonder that Ziegenbalg, the first missionary 
to India, tells us that, on the ship, when it took from the middle 
of November to the middle of the following July to reach India, 
"When the days were calm, we spent them in reading the Bible, 
and we learned not only the letter of the Bible but its inner 
sweetness." I don't wonder that when Stanley went into the 
heart of Africa to find Livingstone, he found him carrying with 
him the little Testament that he had gotten when he was a 
youth for learning to recite perfectly the 119th Psalm. And 
Livingstone had fed upon this Testament and nourished his soul 
upon it, and received strength for his wonderful mission through 
the power of the infinite book. 

The Bible is at the heart of Christian missions. Jesus Christ, 
the great Missionary, the Captain of our salvation, wherever he 
may have gotten his original impulse for his divine coming into 
the world to save it, got his daily nourishment for his mission 
from the Scriptures. And when he stands before the people there 
in the synagogue at Nazareth and lays out his missionary propa- 
ganda that includes the Gentiles, he begins with quoting the 



THE BIBLE AT THE HEART OF MISSIONS 99 

Scripture and says, "The Spirit hath anointed me to preach the 
Gospel." 

When the Church has been saturated with the Scriptures it Missionary 
has been fired with missionary zeal. The first missionaries that Zeal 
went out to the East were from the Pietists, who restored the 
Bible to a place in their hearts. The Moravian missionaries, the 
most wonderful missionaries in many respects the world has ever 
known, went from a Bible-loving people. Every act of this people 
was associated with the Scriptures. You remember that picture 
of Christian David, with his followers, when he came to the 
estate of Count Zinzendorf, where these exiles had been given 
a home, and struck his ax into the tree, and said, "Yea, the 
sparrow hath found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself, 
where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, 
my King, and my God." More than two thousand missionaries 
went out from that Moravian Church. This story is a miracle 
almost of missionary enthusiasm. 

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries England was An Open 
getting hold of the Bible. The Bible was being translated into f^Eevered 
the tongue of the people, was getting out among the people, and 
when our Wesleyan fathers had made the Bible an open book, in 
the mines of Cornwall, in the Welsh mountains, and on the sea- 
coast by Bristol, in the valleys of Ireland and when the English 
people through the ministry of the Wesleyan itinerants had 
learned to love the Bible, then there sprung up the mighty mis- 
sionary movements that have been increasing until this hour, 
nourished in the Scriptures, and fed thereon. And I come to you 
this morning to say that if our Church wants to take a mighty 
step forward, it needs, pastor and people, to bathe itself in the 
Scriptures. When we see the open Bible loved and revered 
in our homes as we saw it in our fathers' homes, then the mis- 
sionary fire will burn with increasing flame in the heart of the 
Church. 

The mother of the first missionary to India was a quiet, humble A Great 
woman, living in a little town of Saxony. When she came to die Treasure 
she gathered her children about her and said, "Children, I have 
laid up a great treasure for you." "A great treasure?" said the 
eldest daughter, with wonder. "Mother, where is it?" "It is in 
my Bible," said the mother, "seek and you will find it. I have 
wet every page with my tears." No wonder that her son went 

LofC. 



IOO 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



forth to burn out his life at thirty-six, facing the darkness of that 
heathen land. When we as pastors, when the Church wets its 
Bible with its tears, it will be mightily stirred, it will move for- 
ward irresistibly to the conquest of this world for Him for whom 
the book claims it, the Lord of life and glory ! 



Ethics and 
Life 



A Scrutiny of 

Results 



THE NEGRO A MISSIONARY INVEST- 
MENT, A MISSIONARY INVESTOR 

The Rev. J. W. E. Bowen, D.D. 

In an age of commercialism, when monetary values are 
attached to almost every act and fact in life, and when the cry 
upon so many lips in this rush of life is, "Does it pay?" it is 
refreshing to turn aside and consider the spiritual power, content, 
and import of great movements. We may thank God that he 
has denied us the power of constructing scales that can weigh 
thought, heart, life, spirit. Ethics and life cannot be weighed in 
the scales of mathematics, for they live and move and have their 
being in an atmosphere that sense and sin cannot appreciate. 

While it is true that Christianity must never stop to count the 
cost of the redemption of a soul, it is equally true that she must 
stop to see whether she has redeemed that soul. Hers is not to 
reason why, but hers is to ask what? It is the part of common 
sense, therefore, as well as a religious duty to canvass the results 
of a course of action in order to ascertain whether these results 
measure up to the outlay of thought, life, and money. In this 
spirit, we may ask, Does it pay? 

It is a safe and worthy dictum to lay down at the opening of 
this inquiry to say, if the results in the redemption of the Amer- 
ican negro or any other race are not commensurate with the vast 
outlay ; if we are not working a divine miracle in the man himself 
and have not brought him into the ranks as a helper of his 
brethren, and if our methods are those usually employed in this 
kind of work, then it would be no surrender of principle to cease 
this outlay and inquire into the causes of this failure and adopt 
other methods, for outlay is not to be an incident but a means to 
salvation. With these preliminary thoughts to guide us, let us 
take up the first half of our subject : "The Negro as a Missionary 
Investment." 



THE NEGRO AND MISSIONS IOI 

The mightiest orator of the negro race was fond of saying that The standard 
the very best way to judge the negro was to look downward of Jud £ ment 
whence he came, and not upward whither he goeth. This is a 
safe canon for judging any people, and it finds a scientific support 
in the accepted theory that pedigree or history and environment 
are two of the three creative factors in the life of a people. 
History has a continuity that requires ages to break, and even 
under a highly civilized and beautifully cultured state we may dis- 
cover the earmarks of an ancient birth. The persistence of these 
earmarks is a visible argument of the hypnotic grip of the past 
upon the present. The observer of times and the student of 
history has no difficulty in reading these odd hieroglyphics in the 
cultured state of the most advanced of to-day. In the children 
of nature, as seen in the negro of to-day, the traditions and 
practices of their heathenish state may be read by a schoolboy. 
He has the fresh green odor of the forests of Africa, and the 
brogue of his native African jargon may be heard in almost every 
sentence he utters when he attempts to speak the king's language. 
Every people is the physical representation of their moral, social, 
and intellectual habitat, and no abiding change can come until 
new ideals and principles have become clearly apprehended in 
thought and spirit and discovered to be superior in meeting the 
wants of men, and until these have become dominant in their 
spirits. There must be a war between the old and the new for 
supremacy. Therefore the persistence of characteristics upon 
a people in the passage from one form of life to another is not 
an exclusive racial trait, but a universally human trait. These 
are but the graveclothes upon the man who is coming forth from 
a dead past into a living present. They are to be removed that 
the new life may clothe itself in the garments of a well-ordered 
living community. 

Discarding the emotional temper of a modern prophet who a Look 
"sees visions and dreams dreams" and prophesies immense good Backward 
or overwhelming evil, and adopting the cold sense of a student 
of affairs, let us look backward over the shoulders of the past 
and see what has been accomplished for the American negro 
through the agency of the missionary work of the Church. The 
facts fully support the statement that American Christianity has 
achieved a work in the conversion and elevation of the negro such 
as cannot be surpassed in the history of missionary effort. We 



I02 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

are too near the achievement to appreciate its large significance, 
and in this case, as in others, distance would clarify our vision 
and lend enchantment to the view. The American negro pre- 
sented such a picture of dense ignorance and indescribable 
stupidity so recently as the beginning of the last century that 
those unfamiliar to-day with history would be likely to regard 
the facts as incredible. At that period, while the nation had 
discountenaced the slave trade with prohibitive and penal legisla- 
tion, there was not sufficient moral power in the land to enforce 
the legislation and prevent the landing of the unfledged heathen 
upon these shores. That law, framed by legal acumen and with 
lofty purposes, became inoperative because of the lack of a public 
sentiment to give it life. Certain sections of this land could 
present at that time a heterogeneous mass of heathenism that 
could be surpassed only by a like mass of Hottentots on their 
native heath. This statement is not a criticism; it is the bald 
statement of fact. The moral status of the nation could not do 
any more than was done at that time for that dense and stolid 
mass of ignorance. In moral notions they were a blank; in 
religious conceptions they were grossly superstitious, and they had 
as clear an idea of civil government and the requirements of the 
moral law as a baby has of Kant's "Categorical Imperative." It 
cannot be charged that the social condition into which the be- 
nighted pagan was thrust was responsible for his lack of civilized 
views. This state of mind and soul is the native atmosphere of 
the sleeping millions of heathens. This deplorable condition of the 
American negro is unmatched by anything in the nation during 
its century and a half of existence. Human reason hesitates to 
accept without convincing proof, in these days of light and intel- 
ligence, any statement that charges any considerable number of 
its present citizenship with recent paganism. But these statements 
can be well authenticated by unvarnished history. These views 
are not the fancies of verdant youth or the ravings and dis- 
colorations of unbalanced minds ; they are the simple facts known 
to contemporaries, read by the eye of history in unchanging 
type, and they are the statements of men of character and acumen 
in the study of events. A look downward into the pit whence the 
black man was digged will convince the greatest doubter of the 
tremendous work accomplished and of the divine daring involved 
in the undertaking. The poetic statement, "The Greeks are at 



THE NEGRO AND MISSIONS I03 

our doors," has had its stubborn prose written in the presence of 
the negro on this continent from its beginning as a moral con- 
tinent, and had not Christian men and women faced the issue and 
shouldered the obligation the nation might have heard the threat- 
ening and despondent warning of Delilah to the sleeping and 
recreant giant, "Samson, the Philistines are upon thee." 

Let us ask the question, What has been the investment of the 
Christian Church in the negro for his redemption? Here again 
we run upon the truth that the forces that bring about a result 
cannot be computed in numbers or enumerated in words. The 
best things of the Christian Church spurn the statistical columns. 
The very atmosphere is saturated with the divine power that 
works a transformation in men's minds. The best we can do is 
to tabulate a few figures that represent the financial contribution 
of the Church through her agencies for clothing that man in his 
right mind. 

The Missionary Society of our Church has put into the South- The Church's 
ern field during the last ten years, from 1893 to 1902, for the nves men 
negro, the princely amount of $465,160. This is but one item in 
the count of the large gifts of the Church for this particular phase 
of our work. Add to this amount the appropriations of the 
Board of Education of our Church for the education of needy 
students; of the Church Extension Society for church building 
among the people ; of the Sunday School Union and Tract Society 
for the planting of new Sunday schools and for the assistance to 
schools already in operation; of the Woman's Home Missionary 
Society for the erection of Homes of domestic economy and the 
running of the same for the young women of the race; and of 
the Freedmen's Aid and Southern Education Society for the 
erection and maintenance of institutions of high grade throughout 
the South, that the youth of that people may have an even chance 
in getting an education, and also those contributions through the 
other channels of the Church not called benevolent, and you will 
have an amount that fairly amazes one. 

These vast numbers are an expression of an heroic faith in God Heroic Faith 
and of a splendid faith in the great outcome of the negro race. 
This disinterested giving for the conversion of the recently 
liberated slave is cut from the same piece of cloth that Lecky used 
in his History of European Morals when he discovered the trium- 
phant faith of the noble spirits who knocked the chains from the 



104 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

limbs of the patient, dumb-driven slave. Were this the full 
measure of our Church's contribution of this general cause the 
negro would be placed under lasting gratitude. But as a repre- 
sentative of that people I would be untrue to the instincts of my 
nature and false to the facts did I not refer to the noble spirits 
of those dark days, "who through faith subdued kingdoms, 
wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of 
lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, 
out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned 
to flight the armies of the aliens," and "of whom the world was 
not worthy." 
Kesults What is the result? In investigating the result of spiritual 

endeavor we must not be content with the statistical summaries 
of our Conference and census reports. These reports are grati- 
fying in what they say, but they are totally inadequate to compress 
within figures the full result of our work. From these we learn 
that the entire Church communicants of the race are a trifle more 
than 4,000,000, while the whole race of 8,000,000 has been rescued 
from barbarism. Of this large number of Church members, our 
own Church people of color number 300,000, scattered in twenty 
home Conferences and one foreign Conference. These figures 
would mean only so many heads if there were no evidences of 
enlarged character among that constituency. A revival that 
results mostly in an increase of "heads" and a counting of "noses" 
has failed of the true power intended for this exercise of Christian 
power and faith. It not infrequently happens that the best 
revivals come and go with not a single new "head" added to those 
already in the church. Increase in church membership from a 
numerical point of view is desirable and not to be despised. It 
should be sought after; for there is great spiritual momentum 
in a large body. But it should be borne in mind that increase in 
church membership does not mean exclusively increase in "church 
numbership." It may mean, and it should mean, increase of 
power in the membership as well as increase of numbers. A 
revival should result first in an intensification of spiritual life as 
well as an extension in numbers. We must have both intensive 
and extensive life. It is within the limits of truth to say that the 
mere swelling of the numbers catches at the shadow and misses 
the power. God warned his people through the ancient prophet 
that their victories came "not by might, nor by power (numbers), 



THE NEGRO AND MISSIONS IO5 

but by my Spirit." It is a gratifying fact, however, to note that 
in this large number of negro Christians so many have received 
the power of the upper world into their hearts. We may safely 
say that the race has been practically redeemed or snatched from 
the burning. It has been converted and brought into the Chris- 
tian Church. Such result cannot be duplicated in missionary 
annals within the same length of time in any other section of the 
globe. 

No one will claim that all of the "brothers in black" whose Perfection 
names are enrolled on the church record are in life and spirit what not Yet 
the Scriptures demand ; many of them are grossly imperfect. The 
failure of the negroes to embody in their life the ethical principles 
of the Scriptures has provoked occasional derision on the part of 
certain well-meaning persons. This failure is no new thing under 
the sun, and can be easily explained. It has been the burden of 
the Christian Church from its inauguration to bring her com- 
municants to recognize that faith without works is dead; that 
culture was foreordained for service; that practice and morals 
should go hand in hand, and that religion and life were never 
meant to be separated. These defects are the natural accompani- 
ments of a people's effort in passing from one state to another. 
They are in the gulf of transition from irresponsibility to respon- 
sibility, from ignorance to intelligence, from barabarism to 
civilization, from stupidity to culture, and from a life of sin to a 
life of righteousness among men and of holiness toward God. 
Not until the teachings or principles of an institution or cause 
are clearly apprehended in thought as to their meaning, purport, 
and superiority over former views and conceptions can those ideas 
or principles be fully interpreted in life, applied in morals, and 
practiced in faith. These recent recruits to the ranks of the 
King's army see men at first "as trees walking;" their eyes are 
but half open. Here comes the chance of the Christian Church to 
take these by the hand who are feeling their way after truth and, 
Philip-like, lead these sable Greeks to the Master of truth. Their 
minds are filled with childish notions, and they are not yet able 
to discover the bearing of abstract truth upon the concrete 
realities of life. The relation of piety to Christianity and the 
significance of virtue is a product of persistent individual-choice 
effort. These higher lines of life issue forth from the heart 
transformed from sinfulness and conformed to the pattern in the 



106 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

Time mount. It requires a long period to bring this result. The dis- 

Reqmred tance from a life of the gross forms of barbarism or semi- 

civilized life to the beauty, power, and glory of a life transformed 
through and through cannot be counted with ease and alacrity. 
Spirit life, Holy- Spirit life, is the crown of the Gospel life; it is 
the final product of all the struggle and heartache of the soul. 

Does it Pay ? To bring this to pass is the work of the Church. It has been 
pointed out by a very astute observer and careful thinker — the 
late Bishop of London — that "the proper order in the develop- 
ment of mankind is first to humanize, second, moralize, and lastly 
spiritualize." Thus it will appear that the conversion of the 
American negro to the Christianity of the Bible is the laurel 
wreath to crown the brow of modern missions. Ask the question 
again, Does it pay? and the answer is forthcoming; It pays to 
save a race from sin. 

The response of the race to these saving efforts has been spon- 
taneous and fruitful. A new people practically has been added 
to the family of civilized peoples in this work. They stand clothed 
in their right mind, singing the hymn of evangelical Christianity, 
and illustrating in a humble way through their weak efforts the 
power of the Christian religion. These results will be read in the 
history of our times in the succeeding generations with an interest 
that is akin to the interest manifested by the schoolboy in reading 
The Arabian Nights. To the question, What hast thou wrought? 
the negro race stands up as the best results of Christian work in 
these latter days and points to its redeemed millions as the crown 
and reward of these labors. 

The Negro's The second part of the theme must now be considered : "The 

Negro as a Missionary Investor." The actual cash surrender of 
negro redemption must of necessity be insignificantly small when 
compared with the great gifts of the more fortunate in the 
Church. We must bear in mind that the gifts of the Church are 
in consecrated personalities as well as in money. It is well to lift 
our eyes from the purely financial contribution of the race. It is 
no new or wild statement to make, that, left to ourselves, we could 
not carry on effectually the work of the race's redemption. 

The first movement toward the true development of a people is 
that of self-support. The aim of our system is to develop in the 
individual and race that spirit that makes them stand upon their 
feet. Babyhood must be supported and fostered. Manhood sup- 



THE NEGRO AND MISSIONS IO7 

ports and fosters. All effort for the man and race must aim at 
increasing his power and developing in him the true spirit of 
manhood. The real man has not awakened until he realizes his 
duty to undertake the burden of life. As soon as a man can bear 
his burden he ought to be called upon to bear it ; for the constant 
carrying of a people weakens their power and paralyzes their 
energy and unfits them for life. 

Apply these simple canons to the Christian negro and note the self-support 
result. It has been occasionally affirmed that the negro is not 
developing in the spirit of self-support. The reasonable demand 
of self-development and self-support is not that it should be in 
spasmodic efforts, be they never so large in results, but in a 
steady forward movement. If the movement is even and regular, 
the end is obtained. 'Twere better by far that the growth should 
be in small proportion but persistent in its movement than that it 
should be otherwise. The negro has made commendable progress 
in these lines. The best illustration of this movement is the con- 
tribution of our colored constituents last year. The missionary 
appropriation to our colored work last year was $40,000. But 
the colored people gave of that amount $20,000, making the 
actual gift of the Church a trifle over $20,000, or an average of 
$1,000 per Conference for twenty Annual Conferences among 
them. It must be admitted, even by the hypercritical who fears 
that we will spoil our colored membership by over-appropriation, 
that this appropriation to the evangelization of the thousands and 
hundreds of thousands within the bounds of each Conference 
cannot accomplish the direful result. It is admitted by many 
thoughtful colored men who are most anxious for self-support 
that the steps in that direction are not rapid enough and that some 
new method must be instituted to secure the desired end. They 
are ready to accept a feasible plan that will bring about this end 
and that will at the same time prevent evils in its working. 

Self-support is the ideal state to reach unto. However, we The Ideal 
must guard against that disintegrating element that sometimes 
creeps into it, called by the pleasing term "self-complacency." To 
look only at one side of these facts will warp our judgment. Our 
people of color in the Church have made and are still making an 
effort to place themselves upon a firm basis in Christian life. 
Twenty thousand dollars, to say the least, is a respectable begin- 
ning in that direction, especially when it is fifty per cent of their 



108 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

general appropriation. Their own evangelization is a part of the 
problem of the general evangelization of the world, and hence they 
have contributed by so much to the general cause. But there is 
another phase of this question that should be presented before 
this body. 

Self-depend- It hath been said by those who are supposed to know the facts 

that the negro membership of our Church are less self-dependent 
than the membership of exclusively negro communions. It is 
further said that those exclusive communions raise more benevo- 
lent money in toto and per capita than we do ; that the missionary 
contributions of our own people are insignificant when compared 
with those of other denominations. In sum, it is averred that our 
missionary appropriations tend to weaken our people, pauperize 
their spirit, and deprive them of those vigorous essentials seen in 
others of their kith and kin ; and that because of these facts the 
missionary appropriation should be completely withdrawn and 
our black constituency taught violently and suddenly the supreme 
lesson of self-support. It should be said that these men who 
speak in this fashion are men of large wisdom, and that they 
would not do violence to the cause in which their hearts are 
buried, nor do they intend to check that spirit in the people they 
so much desire to see developed. But it is equally evident to us 
that all the facts have not been laid before their scrutinizing 
minds. 

A Comparison Let us examine this subject. In the first place, we must exclude 
from this comparison the negroes of the small communions and 
those of the Congregationalists, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians, 
for the manifest reason that these people are not required to make 
contributions to these general causes. Our eyes are invaribly 
fixed in such discussions upon the greatest negro Methodist 
bodies in the world, the African Methodist Episcopal Church and 
the next largest of its kind, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion 
Church. Both of these Churches are doing heroic service for 
Christ in the elevation of the race. 

I shall confine myself to the strongest of them, using their short 
term "Bethel" to designate them. This Church has a member- 
ship, according to its own report, approaching three quarters of a 
million, a large body of which is in the United States and a 
goodly number in the West Indies, some in Canada and also in 
Africa. This Church of negroes is great in many respects; it 



THE NEGRO AND MISSIONS I09 

has illustrated as no other similar body what negroes are capable Gifts of 
of doing when left to themselves. They deserve more than a Bethel Churcl1 
passing notice in a review of the missionary forces of the world. 
Their quadrennial report under the missionary secretary, the Rev. 
H. B. Parks, D.D., contains these interesting summaries of their 
collections: 1897, total collection, $11,050.37; 1898, $11,967.35; 
1899, $16,301.55; 1900, $19,557.54. Grand total, $58,876.81. 
An analysis of these figures will disclose the following facts : 
They have included in the sum total three items that are out of 
place in this tabulation. The "Special Donations" of $2,473.27, 
the "Woman's Fund" of $444.39, and the "borrowed money" of 
$13,039.73 have no place whatever in this table as representing 
the collections from the people. Deducting these amounts of 
$15,957.39 from the $58,876.81 leaves a net total of $42,919.42, 
which represents the Easter collection of $33,705.40, and the 
missionary collection given by the preachers of the Conferences, 
$9,214.02. This amount is the net missionary contribution that 
passed through their general treasury. Allow the legitimacy of 
fifty per cent of the collection of the Woman's Home and Foreign 
Society, which is $444.39, and the "Special Donations" of 
$2,473.27, and you have a total of $45,837.08. Add to this amount 
the sixty per cent of the missionary money paid by the preachers 
that was retained by the Annual Conferences, a sum amounting 
to $13,821.03, and the fifty per cent of the Woman's Home and 
Foreign Society retained also by the Conferences, amounting to 
$444.39, and you have, as the grand total of missionary money 
collected by that Church of 700,000 members $60,102.50. This 
amount means that the 700,000 members of this great Church 
gave for the cause of missions, home and foreign, including the 
gifts of the Woman's Home and Foreign Society, a trifle over 
eight and one half cents per member for the quadrennium, or 
two cents, or two cents and one mill, per annum per member. But 
the negro membership of our Church, numbering less than 
300,000, exclusive of their collections for the Woman's Home A Favorable 
Missionary Society and the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, 0Win S 
collected and paid into the general missionary treasury in the same 
period of time the splendid amount of $65,516.84, which is twenty- 
one cents and seven mills per member, or five cents and four mills 
each year. Small as this amount is, it exceeds the amount given 
by the Bethel Church for the quadrennium by $5,414.34, or it 



110 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

exceeds their per capita giving by three cents and three mills per 
year, or for the entire period by thirteen cents and two mills per 
member. It is also to be noted that we have three colored Con- 
ferences among us — Washington, Delaware, South Carolina — 
that raised for benevolences $25,000 a year. That amount 
indicates great activity among our brethren. I am safe in saying, 
according to the figures thus far given for the quadrennium that 
the close of the present quadrennium will show that our people of 
color have raised for missions $75,000, and with the other benevo- 
lences thrown in the aggregate will be very nearly $200,000. 
Leadership Another important fact must be borne in mind: the Bethel 

people had the inspiring presence and superior service of thirteen 
bishops, who were in almost every community and church, urging, 
pleading, directing, and helping their people to make this contri- 
bution for the redemption of the race and the world. Moreover, 
they have had the presence and help of a corresponding secretary 
in the person of the Rev. H. B. Parks, D.D., who travels inces- 
santly among the people and lays the cause upon their hearts with 
an eloquent plea that can scarcely be excelled, while the negro 
membership of our Church had only the presence of a bishop in 
an Annual Conference for five days and occasional visits of a 
secretary of a missionary society from three to eight years apart. 
This statement has not the breath of fault-finding in it. It is a 
simple announcement of a fact. A reason can be given for the 
absence of a missionary secretary that would satisfy the judgment 
of any well-thinking man. The South is poor, and the negroes 
are poorer, and it would not be wise policy on the part of the 
Church to have these general officers neglect the larger fields that 
are able to make large contributions for the Church and give 
their time to the weaker sections, but it is also true that the weaker 
sections will remain weaker until some better provision is made 
for them in the way of direct personal contact and inspiration. 
This splendid work, small as it is, is the fruit of the devotion of 
our hard- worked, poorly paid, and often discouraged pastors. I 
present these figures not to criticise or minimize, but merely to 
state our case in one point, and to show that we are not deserving 
of the severe criticism administered us by our friends, and also 
to show that even with no "straw" we are making respectable 
brick. What think you would be the result were we to have 
officials whose brains and heart are filled with the spirit of the 



THE NEGRO AND MISSIONS III 

Church, men of clear vision who appreciate what their offices 
mean to the Church, their race, and the world, and who, in the 
spirit of their Master would go and inspire the people to self-help 
and bring results? 

Aside from this simple response on the part of this people may Results in 
I ask, are we to expect great money returns for money invested Character 
in the redemption of a race? The Methodist Episcopal Church 
did not go into that Southern field to fill her coffers with money, 
or with an expectation that large financial returns would repay 
the consecration of her heroes and the gifts of philanthropic men 
and women. I bring you not silver and gold, but I bring you the 
confidence and love of three hundred thousand black faces, but 
with hearts washed clean in the blood of the Lamb. I bring you 
twenty Conferences in the South, with fifty per cent of the preach- 
ers therein respectably educated, and another twenty-five per cent 
thoroughly educated and consecrated, who are doing a royal 
service upon starvation pay that the kingdoms of this earth may 
become the kingdoms of Christ. I bring you a race loyal to our 
flag, true to our institutions, and ready to defend these with their 
hearts' best blood. 

Finally, I bring you not silver and gold, but human character An Advance 
that has been redeemed and that shall shine in the diadem of the Sounded 
kingdom. Retreat ! Nay ! Retrench ! Nay ! a thousand times 
nay! Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward. I 
have but one suggestion to make, and that comes up out of the 
heart yearnings of those sable sons of the Church, who are 
struggling under great difficulties, namely, give them well-ap- 
pointed, God-selected, thoroughly consecrated leaders, and the 
years will come on when the Church will see that for every tear 
shed and for every dollar invested the negro race will present 
divine characters, cleansed, purified, educated, fit for the 
Master's use. 



112 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



OUR FOREIGN POPULATIONS AND HOW 
TO REACH THEM 

The Rev. G. B. Addicks, D.D. 

A Multitude There was a time when the word "mission" suggested to us 

of Foreigners the work of the Church in far-away heathen lands, where the 
inhabitants grope in darkness without the light of the Gospel and 
the knowledge of the living God. But since the millions of 
foreigners are within our very gates it is no longer so; for we 
are surrounded by vast mission fields at home, some of which we 
have entered with fair results. But the exigency of the case 
demands that we put forth organized effort in new directions and 
strengthen our forces where we have made a good beginning. 
The field is both important and promising. It is important be- 
cause the multitudes who come here are souls for whom our 
Saviour died, and who as strangers in a strange land need the 
help and sympathy of the Christian people even more than they 
did at home, which help if it be not given by the Church they will 
seek elsewhere. It is important also because of their influence in 
society and their power at the ballot box. They are here to stay, 
and will help to build or help to destroy this government according 
as they may be led. They come here (with the exception of a few 
thousand on the western coast) to make this country their home 
and to make an honest living. But they bring with them wrong 

Wrong Views views of our republican form of government, and some of the 
lower classes interpret civil liberty to mean personal liberty, and, 
blindly following the lead of an antichristian and anarchistic 
element in this country, antagonize our free institutions, desecrate 
our Sabbath, despise the Church, and violate the laws which 
secure life, liberty, and protection to them ; while the Christian 
and Americanized foreigner upholds the government, loves our 
institutions, keeps our laws, and feeling the pulsebeats of this 
nation in its nobler purposes in his own heart will stand by our 
flag even to sacrificing his life. Such is the difference if a Chris- 
tian or an antichristian influence is brought to bear upon them. 

The It is a promising field, because our foreigners are not heathen. 

^t Heathe ^ e better classes are acquainted with the Christian Church and 
know its doctrines ; they have the Bible and are well versed in it. 
But they know the Church as a dead Church and the Bible as a 



WORK AMONG FOREIGNERS IN AMERICA II3 

book of history and doctrine only. They have not learned the 
meaning of the Christ-life in the soul ; they have not a personal 
religious experience. But when they are brought under the 
influence of the living Word, as it is preached by converted men, 
they are moved to repentance, and adjusting this living truth to 
their mechanically acquired religious knowledge they grasp Jesus 
in faith as their personal Saviour and with such a basic knowl- 
edge, as a rule, they hold fast to the end. Even the less favored 
Latin and Greek races that throng our shores are not heathen, 
for they are monotheists, which means they are several centuries 
in advance of the heathen in faith. I therefore feel free to 
emphasize this great home missionary field as a promising field, 
which is broken only in part, it may be, but in part also it is sown 
with good seed and in part it is ripe unto the harvest. 

The reaching of these foreigners, I take it, means more than How to Reach 
simply to preach to them and promiscuously to distribute Chris- Tliem 
tian literature among them, so that it can be said the Gospel has 
been offered them. It means that we shall bring them under the 
saving influence of the Gospel so that they may be born again into 
a new life in Christ Jesus. It is sometimes forgotten that 
although the Gospel is suited to the needs of all it is a delicate 
and discriminating task to dispense it in a way suited to the needs 
of the different classes. I can make only an attempt at answering 
the question of my subject, and what I say may be applicable in 
part to the whole Church. 

1. We must preach the Gospel to them. We might preach Preach the 
many other things for their enlightenment, but if we would reach Gos P el 
them in order to save them we must preach the Gospel. We 
certainly can welcome every new light which may be thrown on 
the chronology, trustworthiness, composition, and authorship of 
the books of the Bible, for a better understanding and the estab- 
lishment of the genuineness of the text, but we should not preach 
higher criticism as such, to the foreigners, as it would remind 
them of men of the pantheistic, the rationalistic, and negative 
tendencies of thought, while the Gospel pure and simple reminds 
them of especially pious and no less scholarly men and of the 
admonitions and prayers of their parents and the songs of their 
childhood, all of which touch their hearts rather than their heads 
only, for religion is a thing of the heart and of faith. 

We must be entirely in sympathy with all scientific research, 
8 



H4 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



What not to 
Preach 



The Gospel's 
Efficacy 



but we should not preach evolution as the modus operandi of 
creation, because it is only an hypothesis and uncertain theory, 
since the origin of plant and animal life lies in the field of specu- 
lation, outside and beyond the field of scientific experiments and 
observations. To preach evolution would undermine the faith of 
the common people in the Bible story of creation without giving 
them a satisfying substitute and would place in the hands of the 
better educated a weapon of much fruitless argument. Any un- 
settling of the faith of the people in the Bible will react upon the 
Church and weaken our missionary effort. We must preach the 
Gospel as the tried and tested truth, given us for our salvation, 
and the whole Bible as the sure word of God. 

Neither is it wise to preach reform to the foreigners in order 
to reach them, as much as we desire their reformation. We must 
follow the example of Wesley, in Litchfield, where he found the 
people reeling in drunkenness nightly, yet said little about 
temperance, but preached the Gospel, with the result of a great 
revival and an abandonment of the part of the people of their 
immoral habits. It is difficult, indeed almost impossible, to reform 
a foreigner before his conversion, but when he has been born to 
a new life he is a total abstainer and often a prohibitionist from 
conviction. The Gospel must be preached first, the heart must 
be changed first, the kingdom of God must first be built up as a 
governing power, and the reformation of character will follow as 
a natural and God-intended consequence, just as a good tree will 
bring forth good fruit. I am afraid we as a whole Church have 
been trying to reform men from their sins rather than to save 
them from their sins, and have reversed God's order — first 
salvation, then reformation. 

2. We must have faith in the efficacy of the Gospel. We have 
branded the infidelity which doubts or denies the existence of 
God with such names as agnosticism, rationalism, skepticism, 
materialism, and made it almost harmless by taking a positive 
stand against it as a Church. But there is another kind of un- 
belief, which consists in practically denying the power of the 
Gospel to save every one that believeth, and consequently denying 
that it is the God-ordained medium through which humanity is 
to be saved. We too often preach and pray and sing without 
expecting any definite results, without faith that some sinner will 
repent and turn to God for salvation. This unbelief is excused 



Salvation 



WORK AMONG FOREIGNERS IN AMERICA 115 

or justified by a persuasion that the sermon has pleased, or the 
service has entertained the audience, or that the word has been 
preached as a witness against them, so they will have no excuse. 
Preaching the Gospel is too serious business to be considered 
as a means of entertainment, and too full of hope and promise 
to be preached as a witness against the hearers, which is an 
incidental result, if they do not accept it. We should preach it 
as a witness to them, that is, we should be witnesses by word of 
mouth and power of spirit for the truth and efficacy of the 
Gospel, and thus carry out the great commission of Christ to 
preach the Gospel to all nations and to disciple them in the name 
of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. For it is this faith- 
less preaching that has alienated the masses from the churches 
in Europe and that will never attract them to the churches in 
America. 

3. We must have faith in the Gospel as a power unto salvation A Power unto 
of all peoples. We often hear it said : "The Gospel has done much 
for the Anglo-Saxons, for it seems especially suited for their 
needs." But of certain classes we say, they are hard to reach, 
and of others, they cannot be reached at all. The Gospel has 
brought rich blessings to the Anglo-Saxon race, spiritual, intel- 
lectual, and material. But there are the great Teutonic peoples, 
the Frisians, the Germans, the Swedes, the Norwegians, and the 
Danish. And there are the Slavs, filling Russia, Bulgaria, Poland, 
and Bohemia with teeming millions. There are also the Latin 
races of Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, as well as the Greeks 
and Jews, who all throng our shores, not to speak of the Indian, 
the Chinese, the African, and the Arab, who dw r ell in foreign coun- 
tries. What authority have we for saying that the Gospel is not 
suited to the needs of all these people ? W T hy should we halt this 
side of a possible, yes, a necessary salvation for all humanity? 
Was God made manifest in the flesh of one race only, of the 
Anglo-Saxon or the German? No, God was manifested in the 
flesh. Was he the son of David only? No, he was the Son of 
Man, of humanity. Was he a high priest for only one nation 
after the order of Aaron, who sacrificed for Israel only? No, he 
was a high priest for all peoples eternally after the order of 
Melchizedek. Then the fact that the Gospel has brought such 
rich blessings to the Anglo-Saxon race should serve as an 
incentive to preach it to all peoples. So far from discouraging 



n6 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Mother 
Tongue 



The Level of 
Companion- 
ship 



Personal 
Work 



us, the people to whom it has brought salvation and civilization 
should be an earnest and sure first fruits of the approaching 
harvest of the myriads of unsaved in every land under the sun. 

4. We must use the language of the people among whom we 
work. If the truth shall appeal to the reason of the hearer, if the 
hidden springs of emotion shall be touched, it must be done by 
the means of the mother tongue. I was once asked by an English- 
speaking Methodist minister why we Germans did not come over 
to the English-speaking church and worship in the language of 
our country and be patriotic. I asked him if he had had any 
experience with Germans. He answered that he had been among 
Germans twenty-five years and at times where they had no 
church. "How many of these Germans were converted and joined 
your church?" I asked. "Well," he answered, "come to think, 
not any." If you would count the number of Christians who are 
reached in their native tongue and also those who have been 
brought to Christ by means of a foreign language the proportion 
would be one to one hundred or five hundred in favor of the 
vernacular. 

5. We must meet the foreigners on their level. I do not say 
go up or down to their level. In obedience to the command of 
Christ we must go out to them, as they are not expected to come 
to us first, and hold services among them in their homes, in 
schoolhouses, in tents, in churches of other denominations until 
we can gather them in churches of our own. We must gather 
their children into Sunday school and kindergarten and win these 
children and the parents through the children. We must not 
show an air of superiority. We must work on their level ; we 
must be familiar with their religious thinking and their intellec- 
tual habits. We must build on what faith they already possess, 
without denying any truth existing in their minds. We should 
identify ourselves with them, live with them, eat and drink with 
them, make their welfare our welfare, bear the reproaches that 
are heaped upon foreigners in this country, just as Christ ate and 
drank with the publicans and sinners and shared the stigma 
attached to their station, in order that he might reach them. 

6. We must do personal work in our effort to save them. We 
can do personal work by kind words. We have done much 
general work in our services, and of late not enough personal 
work among the people. As a Church we depend too much on 



WORK AMONG FOREIGNERS IN AMERICA 117 

outside help; we have even come to depend somewhat on 
traveling evangelists, with their new books and photos, who come 
and go and whose influence, barring noble exceptions, goes with 
them. I would not, however, disparage revival efforts, but the 
pastor should be the leader. Though he may be assisted by some 
proper colaborers, he is the Church-appointed and God-ordained 
person to win souls in his parish. He is the only suitable person 
to build up his own congregation. But his revival effort should The Pastor's 
be followed up by personal effort on the part of himself and of Effort* 1 
carefully selected members of his church. We sometimes have a 
certain false fear or shame in approaching the unconverted on 
the all-important question of their soul's salvation, which they, 
however, expect us to do, and which we certainly must do or share 
the responsibility of their being lost. A young professor in one 
of our schools won the confidence of a bright skeptical young 
student. Both attended the same revival meetings held at the 
college — one to worship, the other apparently to criticise. Be- 
tween meetings they talked on all subjects except religion, 
although the professor heard a voice ever prompting him to open 
that subject also. Finally in a room alone with the student he 
hesitatingly said, "Mr. Smith, I have been wanting to talk to 
you about being a Christian, but — " and to his surprise and delight 
the student answered : "I have been expecting it, professor, and 
I am glad you opened that subject. I am not satisfied with my- 
self." Then the way was open for heart-to-heart work. They 
talked and consulted the Bible on the subject of religion just as 
they conversed on other subjects, and on their knees prayed to 
God for light. And soon the student accepted Christ as his 
personal Saviour and became an enthusiastic worker among his 
fellow-students. This is the kind of work most needed in our 
Church to-day. What strides the Church would make if there 
were only a score of such valuable assistants to each pastor ! 

This personal contact may be opened through a tract gotten up Tract 
in an attractive form and presented in a proper spirit. I fear we 
have been neglecting the old-time systematic and conscientious 
distribution of the tract. In emphasizing the Gospel tract I would 
not reflect upon our Church papers, which cannot serve as a sub- 
stitute for a tract. The Church paper comes to our Christian 
homes, aiding the pastor in building up the kingdom of God 
within the Church, and if sent to non-Christian homes it must 



Il8 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

necessarily lack the definiteness and purposefulness of a tract 
carefully selected according to the needs of the receiver, as also 
the personality which is felt in the presentation of such a tract by 
a Christian man or woman who can follow up the results with 
further helpfulness. A thousand suitable persons should be found 
in every average Conference to assist the pastors as conscientious 
and systematic tract bearers. 

Help in Need Again this helpful religious contact may be introduced by a 
good deed or any act of kindness. There is nothing that the 
stranger within our gates appreciates more than help in need, and 
comfort in distress, when poverty stares him in the face, when 
sickness enters his home, or when death takes away a dear one. 
Though he may never have attended a church in this country, he 
will become affectionately attached to the man or woman who 
brings him aid at this time and directs him to Jesus as his friend 
and will accept an invitation to attend church, especially if it be 
from a countryman. If the visitor be a minister he will be called 
again, perhaps to baptize a child or to perform a marriage cere- 
mony, when friends of the family will be present and a larger field 
of influence will open to him. This has ever been one of the many 
duties of the minister which he has found too little time to per- 
form. But, thank God, we are coming to his aid by our hospitals 
and deaconesses and nurses, which we hope may so multiply that 
we will have help in every congregation from these agencies 
which so strikingly exhibit the spirit of Christ. 

The Port Then let me draw attention also to our port mission, where the 

missionary meets the foreigner as he first steps upon our shores. 
This work has not prospered in the German mission of our 
Church of late, because the burden being too heavy for the East 
German Conference alone, the emigrant house was sold, and we 
now have only an office and a missionary, who, for lack of funds, 
can give only part of his time to this blessed work. It should be 
revived, however, and might be enlarged to a mission for all 
nationalities, which could work in harmony with a similar mission 
in Bremen and other foreign ports. There is no more hopeful 
mission than a port mission, where the foreigner receives his first 
impression in a new country before he has chosen his worldly 
associates, and where he can be directed to one of our ministers 
or other good men who can continue the good work begun here. 
I would suggest that the Missionary Board give this matter con- 



Mission 



WORK AMONG FOREIGNERS IN AMERICA II9 

sideration and also give the whole question of missions among 
our foreigners special attention as a promising, important and, if 
I may so call it, patriotic mission field, which is constantly being 
replenished and overfilled with new material from abroad, now 
from Germany, then from Italy, and at present in great numbers 
from Norway and Sweden. This material must be Christianized 
and Americanized in the best sense of these words. It is impor- 
tant enough to receive special department supervision of the 
Church, so that its connectional interests may be better built up 
by organized harmonious effort, at least in each nationality. Both 
on the high ground of love and duty and from a prudential point 
of view it will pay the Church a hundredfold to turn more of its 
energies and moneys toward building up the eleemosynary and 
educational as well as the missionary departments of our work 
among the foreigners. 

We have come up from small beginnings to considerable The Day of 
numbers in spite of discouragements, and we have no reason to Sma11 Thin S s 
dispair. Our increase has generally been proportionate to the 
increase of the mother Church, and in no year have we had a 
decrease. Only about sixty-five years ago a lonely foreigner 
wandered about in this country, attending now one or another 
Mehodist meetings under deep conviction of sin. He accepts a 
position as professor of Hebrew and Greek, but at night he sits 
at the feet of a humble cobbler, a man of strong faith. Now he 
is at the mourners' bench with scores of others. And as he ob- 
serves how one after another is made glad in the Lord, he sobs, 
"O, is there not enough bread in my Father's house?" and sud- 
denly the light breaks in on his long night of repentance 
and the love of God fills his heart, and William Nast is William 
converted. He immediately feels the call to preach the Gos- Nast 
pel to his countrymen in America and asks the Methodist 
Church to send him. It hesitates. But when it heard the 
earnest pleading of Nast it said, "Go, in the name of the 
Lord," and our work among the Germans has been the result. 
A young German physician enters one of his first mission meet- 
ings to criticise the preacher. The sermon touched his heart, and 
the young scoffer, Nicodemus-like, comes to the young missionary 
by night and asks concerning the way of salvation. He is con- 
verted to God. He soon founds missions in the West and then 
asks the board to send him to Germany to preach the good 



120 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Jacoby, 
Petersen, 
and Larson 



Present 
Outlook 



tidings to his countrymen. The board refused from lack of 
funds, but when they saw the fire in Jacoby's eyes they said, 
"Go, in the name of the Lord," and our work in the Fatherland of 
only fifty years' standing has been the glorious result. 

Fifty years ago a young Norwegian, sailing hither and thither, 
lands at Boston. Attracted by the favor of the Methodists he 
seeks spiritual advice from them, and comes to the glad realiza- 
tion of saving grace. He returns to his home country to tell his 
delightful experience, with the result of a revival in which many 
were converted. He opens missions among his countrymen in 
America, and O. P. Petersen is called the father of Norwegian 
Methodism. 

John Larson, a young Swede, is soundly converted in our 
Bethel Ship Mission and tells the story of the cross to his country- 
men, and our work is begun among the Swedes, both in Sweden 
and America, and has gloriously flourished during the last forty 
years. Other missions spring up in close succession. 

If we were to ask to-day if it has paid to come up through past 
difficulties such as the persecutions and scoffings of unchristian 
foreigners, the prejudicial opinion of the Americans, the deficient 
connectionalism, the scattering population, and whether we should 
continue in face of present discouragements like the language 
problem, which we are trying to solve, the Germans and Swedes, 
and Norwegians and Danish, and Welsh and French, and Italians 
and Bohemians, and Finlanders, who are a direct or an indirect 
fruit of our work among the foreigners in this and European 
countries, would give the answer several hundred thousand strong, 
Yes ! for the sake of the thousands who have been influenced in 
our Sunday schools and are now in our reach, for the sake of the 
thousands whose prejudices have been removed by our successes, 
for the sake of the millions who have never been touched by the 
living Word, for the sake of our foreign fields which are de- 
pendent on our success. If such things were possible from so 
small a beginning in so short a time, we may expect far greater 
results with our stronger membership, our larger fields, and better 
equipment. The field is open, the laborers are at hand, the means 
will be forthcoming, God's promises are unfailing, and greater 
things are in store for us, if we will but move forward with a 
firm faith in God and a burning love for lost souls. God give us 
more of this faith and this love ! 



OUR CITY PROBLEM 121 

OUR CITY PROBLEM 

The Rev. F. M. North, D.D. 

The problem of the city is the problem of the world. It is not It is the 
merely modern — there are Alexandria and Athens and Ephesus. p^iem 
It is not wholly occidental — there are Calcutta and Tokyo and 
Peking. It is not Anglo-Saxon alone — there are Madrid and St. 
Petersburg and Vienna. It is wider than America — there are 
Edinburgh and Manchester and Melbourne. The crudest con- 
vulsion of the Christian centuries centered in the city on the 
Seine. The most potent government of the world is in the city 
upon the Thames. The Enigma of the Faith, whose word to the 
rim of the world binds fast the consciences of men, has his seat 
in the city by the Tiber. The world's supreme tragedy took place 
just "outside a city's wall." One need but speak the names — 
Paris, London, Rome, Jerusalem — to be convinced that the prob- 
lem of the city is the problem of the world. But upon this 
background of continent and centuries it is America that rises 
before us. We must not by too wide a look risk the peril of what 
Dr. Watkinson calls "the malignance of the law of perspective." 
It is our city problem. 

First, then, it states itself. Its most obvious terms are those stated in 
of extension. Inevitably we count. Bigness stirs our interest, Extension 
but is often the smallest element in a problem. Some questions 
cannot be answered in square miles. In the matter of bread and 
hunger a fertile acre measures more than the Sahara. All the 
marvels are not in the census tables. Yet it was one of the 
deepest notes of our Lord's nature that he was ever strangely 
moved in the presence of the multitude. And it is an inadequate 
if not a depraved heart that can look upon the cities of America — 
not the streets, the buildings, the art, the commerce, but the 
people — for the city is people — without the stir of emotion which 
opens new depths in the soul. For a moment let us measure and 
count. 

Begin with the metropolis and distribute it into well-known New York 
terms. Three great railroads radiate from New York city. One Clty 
leads eastward. Suppose New England swept clean of her popu- 
lation. Let the inhabitants of New York move out upon that 
railroad. From them every city, large and small, from Mount 



122 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

Vernon to Boston might be repeopled, then Maine, New Hamp- 
shire, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Connecticut could be supplied 
and enough would remain to replace the population of every one 
of the seven great manufacturing cities of Massachusetts. Or, if 
the metropolis were to be left unpeopled, and drafts for a new 
era were to be made upon the cities through which many of us 
have come to this Convention, the levy would depopulate Yonkers, 
Poughkeepsie, Troy, Albany, Schenectady, Utica, Syracuse, 
Rochester, and Buffalo ; it would need to add to these Cleveland, 
Toledo, and Chicago and nearly all of Minneapolis, Milwaukee, 
or St. Paul. 
Foreign Ports Use other terms. Trace our commerce to foreign ports. You 
and Capitals mus t mass together ten of them — Glasgow, Liverpool, Copen- 
hagen, Antwerp, Bremen, Hamburg, Havre, Marseilles, Lisbon, 
and Genoa — to reach the aggregate population now within the 
metropolitan limits. It would require the capitals of France and 
Russia — Paris and St. Petersburg — or those of the three allies, 
Austria, Germany, and Italy — Vienna, Berlin, and Rome — or the 
group of eleven smaller capitals from Sweden to Tripoli — Stock- 
holm, Christiania, Copenhagen, The Hague, Brussels, Berne, 
Madrid, Athens, Constantinople, Cairo, Fez — to replace the popu- 
lation now crowded within the limits of 326 square miles. 
The Six Once more. The six largest cities of the United States — those 

Largest rties Q £ c;oo,ooo inhabitants and over — Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, 
New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis, contain with their en- 
virons 11,125,009 people — one seventh of the entire population 
of the United States. These six cities themselves have within 
their corporate limits, upon an area of about 1,500 square miles, 
an average of over 5,250 persons to the square mile, 7,902,813 
people — a population as large as that of the entire country at the 
time of the war of 181 2 — in density all the way from Chicago's 
sparsely settled prairie lots to the block in New York where last 
night slept 4,000 people on a ground space of less than four acres, 
or 1,200 persons to the acre. Express these figures in terms 
familiar to those assembled here from half a hundred States and 
Territories. North of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi are 
109 cities of population between 25,000 and 400,000. It requires 
them all to match the number who dwell in these six largest cities. 
The Great Westward of longitude gy° stretches a great domain of States 
and Territories, containing, with the omission of Texas and 



Northwest 



OUR CITY PROBLEM 1 23 

Alaska, 1,566,000 square miles. It is not all habitable ; some of 
it is desert, some is built on edge, and some is above the timber 
line. But here are seventeen States and Territories, held by the 
nation and by the Church to be one of the world's great mission 
fields for commerce and religion. In its 1,500,000 square miles 
are scattered, with the variation of perhaps 100,000, the same 
number of people that are concentrated upon the 1,500 square 
miles of our six largest cities. 

If smaller areas make the statement more concrete, mark the The Cities of 
facts in three great States. In Ohio are nine cities of over 25,000 states 
inhabitants; for every 5,000 who live outside those cities 2,000 
live within them. Pennsylvania has in similar cities 2,500,000 
people, three eighths of her total population. Out of New York's 
population of 7,200,000, there are found in such cities 4,500,000, 
five eighths of the whole. These are but divisions and variations 
of the statements so familiar that their impressiveness is often 
lost — that the urban population is thirty-three per cent of the 
whole ; in a word, that our problem, whatever it means, however 
it may be solved, disregarding its far-reaching, indirect influences, 
is the direct concern of one soul out of every three in our land. 

Were this condition stationary it would be significant. But it The Flow of 
is not a quiet sea with gentle lift and fall — it is a current flowing Cl °^e S a 10n 
steadily, ever deeper, ever wider. The speed at which this stream 
of population sets toward the cities slackened during the past 
decade. Yet the ratio of increase, twenty-one per cent for the 
entire population and thirty-seven per cent for the urban popula- 
tion, is ominous. On the Atlantic seaboard only three States out 
of nine are left with a majority of their population outside the 
city. Of every hundred persons added to the population during 
that decade fifty-eight are found in the cities. There are now 
160 cities of 25,000 population and over — a net gain of 38 in ten The Rapid 
years. One out of every five of our people lives in such a city, c^g arge 
Of the twenty cities of the first rank in 1800 but one reached a 
population of over 60,000, while the total number of their inhab- 
itants was only 250,000. Fifty years later there were six cities 
with a population exceeding 100,000, with a total for the twenty 
principal cities of 1,800,000. At the beginning of the present 
century we have 38 cities of 100,000 population and over, of which 
the first twenty contain nearly 12,000,000 people. If cities of 
100,000 as a minimum be classed as of the first rank, our country 



124 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

waited until 1820 for its first one, and in it at that time 123,700 
people dwelt, 1.28 per cent of the whole population. In eighty 
years this one has become thirty-eight, in which are now found 
over 14,000,000, or 18.62 per cent of the total population. New 
York city had at the beginning of the century a population of 
60,000; it now has sixty times that number. There are now in 
Chicago and New York nearly as many people as there were in 
the whole land in 1800. Of the thirty-four assembly districts in 
New York there are eleven each of which contains a greater 
population than that of the entire city a hundred years ago. 

Stated thus in terms of extension, our city problem deals with 
vast numbers. The city is not a phrase; it is people. It shows 
these people in aggregates ever increasing in number and con- 
centration, both relatively to themselves and to the growing 
population. Not only is the gross total becoming greater, but the 
tendency is constantly toward the combination in larger numbers, 
that is, to great cities. 

The Problem But our city problem states itself also in terms of intension. 

I 1 tension ° f ^ ^ as depth as we ^ as breadth. We must measure not alone by 
tape line, but by plummet. 

Problems of life belong to each man in himself. They would 
demand solution if there were but one man in the world. They 
are individual. Where there is another man problems of a new 
phase appear. To the individual is added the mutual. Let the 
third man come upon the scene and fresh occasions arise, a new 
order must be established, problems become communal. The 
cities are communities. Whatever inheres in the individual — 
physical and mental aptitudes, hereditary tendencies, capacity for 
life, personality — belongs as inalienably to the human unit in the 
mass as it does to the trapper in the pathless forest or the 
philosopher in the isolation of his mountain retreat. Were the 
city no more than the aggregation of these individual units, the 
problem of life by mere multiplication would become most intense 
and mysterious. But the city is not the aggregation, but the 
congregation, of people. The touch is not that of external contact 
alone, but of the interpenetration of lives. The environment is not 
natural, it is artificial ; the pressure is not that of the great inani- 
mate facts, but that of vital, insistent personality. The natural 
tendencies of men combined with the artificial conditions of a 
composite life make the city the supreme test both of the indi- 



OUR CITY PROBLEM 12$ 

vidual character and of the social order. In the interaction of 
these units of personality is the very crisis of life. 

Here, then, our problem deals with every type of character and All Sorts and 
all the races of the world. Into these crucial communities have S^ dltlons of 
crowded all sorts and conditions of men. We may well adopt the 
prayer book's phrase. Africa, Asia, and Europe are around the 
corner from each other. Celt and Teuton, Czech and Slav, Latin 
and Semite, Negro and Mongolian, tread the same pavements 
and buy at the same counters. In a recent canvass of one assem- 
bly district we found thirty-five nationalities in an area of a dozen 
squares. There are fully 600,000 Hebrews — German, Russian, 
Polish, Roumanian — in the metropolis; out of every four per- 
sons in Manhattan Borough one is a Jew. Where Methodism 
centered in the strong churches which gave tone and vigor to the 
great movement in its earlier days, the Gentile population is now 
not more than one per cent. They of Italy salute us. The 
peasantry of the Campagna and of Sicily are finding new homes 
in the worst crowded sections of every city. In New York we 
have an Italian city as large as Venice, larger than Columbus, 
Ohio, by 10,000. There is a building in Chinatown which has a 
Methodist mission on the first floor and a Joss house on the third. 
The names on some of the Sunday school registers, on poll lists, 
in our city directories; a catalogue of our newspapers and the 
merchandise signs of our streets; the class lists of our public 
schools and the panels of our juries; the commitment papers of 
our courts and the record books of our almshouses and hospitals, 
to say nothing of our prisons, offer a concrete demonstration of 
the presence of the foreigners in our cities with which the colder old-World 
statements of the census fail to impress us. Racial characteristics ^* Y l£ New " 
survive. The prejudice of oppression dies slowly. The rebel Environment 
against one social order does not with cheerfulness accept another. 
The hater of a false religion does not at a moment become a lover 
of the true. The plotter against corrupt government suspects 
iniquity in all authority. American air, especially that of cities, 
does not at once change the deformed into the upright, or make 
the ignorant wise. Old- World thoughts but sluggishly fill New- 
World molds. Language expresses, but it also petrifies. Our 
problem is the city, intensified by the perplexities of every race 
and region of the whole world ; it is more than a city problem — 
it is the problem of the cosmopolis. 



126 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The 

Economics 
of Hunger 



Questions 
that Burn 



Homeless- 
ness of the 
Great City 



But the statement of the intension of the problem does not stop 
here. Every question which has ever vexed the world emerges 
and with new emphasis makes its demand. 

Here is the fight with hunger. The wolf at the door is a rural 
figure — it is a civic fact. In every great city a large percentage 
of the people — in New York, Jacob Riis says, it is one third — are 
at or beyond the line of helpless poverty. They are where the 
increase of a penny in the loaf means less bread ; where five cents 
more for a pail of coal is the beginning of disaster ; where cessa- 
tion of work or of help for two weeks would mean starvation or 
the poorhouse. These are not merely what Mr. H. G. Wells in 
his Anticipations declares we must always have in our large 
cities — "the submerged portion of the social body, a leaderless, 
aimless multitude, a multitude of people drifting down toward 
the abyss," whose presence and individual doom will be unavoid- 
able, at any rate for many generations of men— "an integral part 
of this physiological process of mechanical progress, as inevitable 
in the social body as are waste matter and disintegrating cells in 
the body of an active and healthy man" — not merely these, but the 
day laborer, the small mechanic, the casual, the seamstress, the 
hundreds of thousands of young men and women who earn no 
margin above the bare necessity, a multitude whose woes and 
anxieties haunt us like spectral thoughts in the darkness. 

Questions of property become acute where, for example, but 
six out of a hundred are property owners. The right of private 
ownership ceases to be academic where the measure of values is 
inches and not miles. Where the tenants are many and the 
owners are few, economics is more than theory; rent, wages, 
interest, and taxes become questions that burn. 

And the home! Alas! the pity of it, the crowded, homeless 
city ! Cardinal Manning declared, "Domestic life creates a 
nation." America needs to remember it. Somewhere Frederick 
W. Robertson says: "A happy home is the single spot of rest 
which a man has upon the earth for the cultivation of his noblest 
sensibilities." Write this fine sentiment large upon your banner 
and carry it about through the streets which you and I know. 
The multitudes thronging the sidewalks, panting upon the door- 
steps, peering forth from festering alleys, leaning from the one 
window of their dingy cubicles, will applaud the fair ideal and 
decry you for a fool and as prisoners stretch out their hands for 



OUR CITY PROBLEM 127 

liberty until their shackles bruise and silence them — will sink 
again into sullen, sodden hopelessness. Homelessness is the lot 
of the poor in our great cities. 

Here, too, center the age-long struggles of the social life. The The 
battle line of the conflict between employer and employed is in struggle* 
our great cities. Here capital compacts itself and labor combines. 
Power of organization depends upon ease of contact. Exposure 
promotes the quick contagion of ideas. The city asserts the 
limitations of individual privilege and opens to the light the subtle 
relations between the man and the community in the control of 
the necessities of the social order. Here democracy is to find its Democracy on 
defeat or its triumph. Its final arena was not the little states of Trial 
Greece, the grim, gray streets of Paris, or the gleaming, skyward 
cantons of Switzerland, but it is the complex life of our American 
cities. 

In every form of life, for childhood, womanhood, manhood; 
for home, for industry, for education, for religion, for social 
order, for charity, for government, for art, for commerce, for 
Life, the city, the American city, has problems, more intense, 
more far-reaching than have ever taxed the mind or tested the 
heart of humanity in all its progress. 

Thus "our city problem" states itself in terms of extension and 
intension. 

But now we must go further. Our problem is our test. The Our Problem 
city is a twentieth-century fact. As a problem it has escaped from is 0ur Test 
the category of the curious and is found in that of the inevitable. 
It is still treated at times as a footnote in some chapter on 
pastoral theology, or as if it were like the question of the fourth 
dimension of space — interesting but somewhat distant. But 
when we turn to the practical world commerce has found the city, 
science and statesmanship reckon with it, literature exploits it, 
philanthropy centers upon it. Civilization has created it and 
civilization is now tested by it. At the heart of civilization is 
Christianity. Can the Gospel or the Church which gives it em- 
bodiment and expression escape the test? It is forbidden to-day 
that a man be a St. Simeon on his pillar, or a St. Anthony in his 
cave — with back toward the world's problems and face toward 
the skies. It is not the dream of escape, but the inspiration of 
conquest, which must control. Calvin in his city and Savonarola 
in his — men whose conception of the mastership of Christ shows 



128 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Ideals 



Is the Gospel 
for the 
Multitude ? 



Has the 
Church a 
Social 
Message % 



Is Our Master 
the Master of 
Life? 



heroic and sublime even through their intolerance, their austerity, 
and the narrowness of their methods — reveal to us our test and 
our duty. 

Let us, then, admit and assert that the city which is our problem 
is also our test — ours, the test of our Christianity, the test of our 
Methodism. 

It puts upon trial our ideals. It forces us to determine 
whether we really conceive of the Gospel as a message for all men 
and for all life. We have been strong to combat election and 
reprobation and to assert free grace for all, but have we entirely 
escaped that subtlest temptation of sainthood, which practically 
accepts the Gospel as God's gracious gift to us and to a few — per- 
haps many — akin to us, but sees no salvation in this world or the 
next for the multitudes for whom we think we believe Christ 
died. Men and women of every type of character, familiar with 
every phase of vice, warped by every form of prejudice, repre- 
senting every race under the skies, pass our church doors by 
thousands and ten thousands daily. They are not half the globe 
away, divided from us by the seas. They are here within sight 
and touch. Do we hold that the Gospel is meant for them ? 

The city tests our ideals of the scope of the Gospel in saving 
not men but man. Have we a social message ? Does the kingdom 
of God reconstruct society, or does it exhaust itself in regenera- 
ting the individual? Does the gleam of the radiant city in the 
heavens where those choice spirits who have been rescued from 
this wrecked earth are forever with the Lord — a group of pilgrims 
to constitute a new commonwealth of the skies — alone hold our 
vision, or do we see a new Jerusalem coming down from above 
and a humanity redeemed, restored, glorified, risen with Christ 
and hid with Christ in God? Is the Church the finality — do 
God's love and care center and remain in her — or is the Church 
God's instrument, his channel, his expression, for the representa- 
tion of Christ to the perverted affection, the dim reason, the dull 
conscience of men, until the world seeing him as he is shall become 
a new world ? 

Do our ideals include Christ's mastery of life? Stand in some 
great civic center and look about you. Who is master here? 
Yonder is the noisy mart of commerce. Here is the quiet home 
of literature. The law asserts itself, in legislative hall and from 
judge's bench. Industry is awhirl in a thousand factories, and 



OUR CITY PROBLEM 120, 

the shipping from every sea is yonder at the wharves. Who is 
master here ? Is the Saviour of men the Lord of life ? Is He who 
died upon the cross alive in the heart of the world? The city 
tests our ideals. 

It tests our methods. We are coming to understand that Methods 
Wesley himself left in his pattern margins for growth. The 
machinery that strains and creaks in these modern days is not his 
invention. Had he not been wise enough to know that progress 
means change he could not have been powerful enough to win the 
word of the historian Lecky, who says that "Wesley had a wider 
constructive influence in the sphere of practical religion than any 
other man who has appeared since the sixteenth century." 
Surely heredity is on our side. We are not here concerned to 
discuss the variations of method which the new life of our cities 
demands. The principle underlying those changes is Paul's 
principle and Wesley's. Paul's statement of it was, "I am made 
all things to all men, that I may by all means save some." Wesley 
announced the same principle in his deeds ; having tamed to the 
gentleness of Christ the Kingswood miners, he straightway built 
a house and procured teachers that their destitute children might 
be taught. Given the outstretched hand of need and the out- 
stretched hand of help, the exalted task of the Church is to bring 
them together. The great point is the point of contact. Method The Point of 
means finding that. Our system, some say, is adapted to rural Contact 
districts and to the small towns. The question the city raises is, 
Cannot the spirit which hunts for lost souls in the country find 
ways to seek them in the crowd ? We are evangelists. May the 
day never come when ardent evangelism ceases among us ! But 
is evangelism a thing of meetings, of altars, of fixed modes ? 
Methodism cannot be driven from pavement to fields. Can it not, 
aye, does it not push itself into a thousand forms of ministry and 
become incarnate in the lives of men bringing into the desolation 
the cheer of the Gospel and transforming even beneath the city's 
pall the hearts of sinners into the image of God? 

Yes, and it tests our resources. This is trite. Our ears are Resources 
accustomed to it. But think of it. Let an example or two suffice. 
Here are our Italians. They are in all our cities. They are 
accessible. They are, for the most part, pitiably poor. They are 
used to fine churches. To them beauty and order are accompani- 
ments of worship. What do we offer them? Dingy halls in 
9 



130 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The 

Downtown 

Church 



Methodism 
Must Meet 
this City 
Test 



The Test 

Means 

Opportunity 



obscure streets. The service is robbed of attraction and appeal 
by our destitution. Our case is lost before we plead by 
our very insignificance. A few thousand dollars will cover all 
that Methodism is doing in the cities for the Italians — nor are we 
by any means outstripped by the other denominations. Consider 
the deserted church — the downtown church. In the economics of 
Providence it is centered where the people are, and its mission is 
to them. Whatever the history has been, the fact is patent that 
everywhere throughout our cities are these vantage points. For 
the most part they should be and could be transformed into 
glorious agencies for the salvation of men and the redemption of 
the community. Why rather do they stand idle, or serve only as 
monuments of the past ? No longer can it be said that the Church 
lacks courage and ideals. For throughout our cities, within a 
score of years, men have been raised up who understand in this 
matter the mind of the Master. But the test comes upon our re- 
sources. In our own city I can find you six Methodist churches, 
which were yielding to the desolation of migration and seemed to 
have no future but death or removal, which are now strong in 
ministry and warm with the Gospel life. Why? Because a half 
dozen men who were able and were willing have backed them 
with fifteen or twenty thousand dollars a year to make them not 
"mission" but "missionary" churches in the greatest missionary 
field of the world. 

Other tests have come to the spirit of Methodism. The need of 
material equipment and of consecrated men in those early years, 
the demand that her sons and daughters should be educated in 
her own schools and colleges, the cry of the far lands that the 
Gospel should be sent even unto them, the claim of a great 
country, South and West, for preachers and for churches, the 
sudden appeal of an enslaved race awaking to find its day of 
freedom and peril dawning — these have come and the Church's 
ideals have found room, her methods have been adapted, her re- 
sources have been poured forth, and the successive tests have been 
met. The new test is the city — from it the Church will not shrink. 

But test is opportunity. They are two sides of the same divine 
thought. The same strain which tries the soul opens somewhere 
a door. Already the test has been seen upon its opportunity side. 
Vast changes, often unnoted, are taking place in the attitude and 
organization of our churches in the cities. They are finding for 



OUR CITY PROBLEM I3I 

themselves a new alignment and are aiming at larger conquests. 
Our grand Missionary Society has concentrated its gaze upon 
the cities, and among the multitude of its modes of service has 
found a definite place for city evangelization. The societies for 
city evangelization have come into harmonious relations with one 
another, and, fitted now into the machinery of the Church, become 
the warp upon which to work out the new and larger design. 
Beneficence, the organized kindness of the Gospel, builds its 
strongholds of mercy in our cities. Germany's only gifts to us 
are not population and rationalism. Friedrich Froebel, when he The 
began to teach the world how to teach its children, did not foresee Cooperating 
what now we know — that the kindergarten is to be a force for 
purity and for righteousness acting upon the plastic material of 
childhood in every great city of the land. Theodore Fliedner, 
with his humble school of service at Kaiserswerth, did not per- 
ceive that, in reviving the order of deaconesses and organizing 
Christian womanhood for service, he was blessing not Germany 
alone, but the world. Here are two names that the city's child- 
hood and poverty will never let die. Froebel and Fliedner 
planned and sacrificed and prayed for the American city of the 
twentieth century. Here are the Settlement — the Settlement with 
Christ in it — the Rescue Mission, erratic and potent, yet to be 
adjusted to the greater movements ; the popularization of knowl- 
edge by free lecture and educational classes ; the organization of 
charity ; the community control of the common necessities of all ; 
the scientific study of the causes and conditions of poverty and 
crime; the new political economy which centers in the rights 
and privileges of the man and holds that whether trade shall be 
free may be a debatable question, but that whether man must be 
free admits of no discussion. Weigh the meaning of the training 
schools for Christian workers in our cities. Observe the move- Signs of 
ment of conviction in our colleges and seminaries. Chairs of °S re8B 
sociology and applied Christianity are of recent date, and from 
them now students are sent into our great cities to study the world 
to which they are some day to preach. It is at last seen that the 
training for the ministry involves not only theology that men may 
know about God, and anthropology that they may know about 
man, but sociology that they may know about men. The change 
in industrial conditions has brought the country to the town. The 
frontiers are now streets, not acres. The reflex action of civic 



132 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Reflex 
Action of 
Civic upon 
Rural and 
Foreign Life 



The Spirit of 
the Times 



upon rural life was never what it is to-day. The city is America's 
central home mission field. Nor is the reflex action true only of 
the home land. The testimony comes from Germany, from Scan- 
dinavia, from Italy, from China, from Japan, that the evangeliza- 
tion here of those whom we call foreigners means the radiation 
of a mighty influence throughout lands we shall never see. Who 
in this Convention can forget that our great work in Germany 
began in the city mission field of Cincinnati ; that under Nast and 
Miller, Jacoby and Schmucker it spread to the cities of the middle 
West and then by a reflex movement created the Methodism of 
the Fatherland? Who, remembering Sweden and Norway, can 
forget Pastor Hedstrom, the seaman's missionary of New York, 
or Petersen as he takes ship from the same port, "to raise up," as 
Bishop Waugh told him, "a people for God in Norway." Out of 
the heart of the city, at a great meeting in the old Mulberry Street 
Church, the impulse sprang which created our Mission in China, 
and to-day, though our work is in other provinces of the wonder- 
ful old empire, the interaction between Chinese work in San 
Francisco and the Atlantic coast cities and that in Canton is con- 
stant. To our cities have come the peasants of Italy: they go 
back with the Bible in their hands and a new allegiance in their 
hearts. From Japan the select few, clever and alert, gather in our 
parlor churches and Christian Homes and reflect back to the island 
home the truths of the Gospel. The first book published by that 
Pauline evangelist, William Taylor, was Street Preaching in San 
Francisco. Those who get near the heart of the foreign popula- 
tion in our cities believe not only that these people can be reached 
by the Gospel, but that through their redeemed lives God is build- 
ing a highway to the lands from which they come. 

But the crisis of a great opportunity is shown less by these con- 
crete forces among which the Church should retain its divinely 
ordained leadership than by the spirit that is abroad in human 
society — the Zeitgeist. The call to service echoes about the world. 
Creeds differ and will continue to differ. The hope of Christian 
unity is not in the realm of the intellect, in the high altitudes of 
philosophy and theology, but in the realm of the heart, upon the 
broad plains of human service. Words which, shouted from peak 
to peak, awaken only confused echoes, spoken in whispers in the 
common ways of weary men find the soul and reveal us brothers 
of the common life in loving obedience to Him who rules us all, 



OUR CITY PROBLEM 1 33 

because he is the Son of Man. Everywhere humanity is expect- 
ant. What has been felt to be a growing indifference to religious 
life, certainly to ecclesiastical forms, is rather a stronger em- 
phasis upon the essentials of the faith, and a wider diffusion of 
the ethical principles of the Gospel. The swing of the world's 
thought is again toward the Man of Nazareth. The instinct of 
humanity declares that help is laid upon One that is mighty — 
mighty to save. To this waiting world the Church must come 
with the larger conception of Christ, to teach in the cities — in the 
homes, in the market place, in forum, in hall of learning, in the 
lanes and streets — that the kingdom of God is among us, that the 
living Jesus is here. Our problem is our test — our test is our op- 
portunity. 

But opportunity is only Duty "writ large." "It is a vain thing Opportunity 
to go back upon human progress. The industrial revolution which y 

has made our great cities, and which through them supplies the 
needs of mankind, is part of God's providence ; and what we have 
to do, the real task of our generation, is to face the problems 
which the city life presents, applying to them the light which the 
Bible gives us and determining that, so far as in us lies, and by 
the power of God and of Christ, London and New York shall not 
be as Babylon, but as the New Jerusalem" (Fremantle). 

The gates are open, we must enter. The Master who wept over The City Calls 
a city calls: we dare not slight his tears. Let Methodism not to Methodism 
falter. We have a theology that works, without apology or re- 
vision. We know the language of the common folk. We have the 
friendship of the foreigners, for our missionaries with schools 
and hospitals and preaching are in their lands. We have numbers. 
The prestige of a great movement embodying itself in a great 
organization with success the world over cannot be ignored. Ours 
is a flexible system. We have wealth. Soon men will endow the 
mission work in the cities as they have for the past twenty-five 
years been endowing colleges. We have leaders. What one of 
the bishops of our Church has not pleaded for the cities ? There 
is not a general secretary in the field by whom this crisis is not 
felt. Every editor in the Church is convinced and ardent. No 
college president among us is not alive to the city's influence and 
the city's need. Laymen of force and resources consecrate them- 
selves to the betterment of our cities. The city is upon the 
Church's conscience. Let us not hesitate. Let us not wait. 



134 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

Methodism This Methodism of ours more than any other denomination 

and Progress j ias j^d at j lear t the welfare of the common people. She rescued 
from deism and atheism that Anglo-Saxon life which to-day is 
the great conquering force in civilization. She has had a career 
of unparalleled progress and has become the greatest Protestant 
factor in the world's supreme republic, and has penetrated into 
the secret needs of both the old states of Europe and the decadent 
religions of the Orient. Shall she now neglect the supreme oppor- 
tunity of the Christian centuries? Is my language too strong? 
One of our bishops has said — a chevalier of missions — "The 
greatest cause in the world is missions, and the greatest depart- 
ment of missions is city evangelization." 
Chalmers and There is no chapter in ecclesiastical history more significant 
Car y e t ^ an ^j- w hich records Thomas Chalmers's discovery of the city. 

It is the classic of modern city evangelization. Said Carlyle of 
him : "What a wonderful old man Chalmers is ! or, rather, he has 
all the buoyancy of youth. When so many of us are wringing our 
hands in hopeless despair over the vileness and wretchedness of 
the large towns there goes the old man, shovel in hand, down into 
the dirtiest puddles of the worst part of Edinburgh, clears them 
out and fills the sewers with living water. It is a beautiful sight !" 
"The wonderful old man" had the city, not only on his heart, but 
on his conscience. Oliver Cromwell once, confronting a great 
problem, said that he knew that it could not be solved without 
religion. "I raised such men," said he, "as had the fear of God 
upon them ; as made some conscience of what they did, and from 
that day forward, I must say to you, they were never beaten and 
whenever they were engaged against the enemy they beat con- 
tinually." 

The city is our problem, our test, our opportunity, our obliga- 
tion. Let us be "men who make some conscience of what we do," 
and with duty done our problem will be solved. We shall never 
be beaten ! 



HAWAII AND THE PHILIPPINES 135 

THE OPEN DOOR IN HAWAII AND THE 
PHILIPPINES 

The Rev. H. C. Stuntz, D.D. 

Of the Hawaiian Islands I know but little, except what I saw 
during two brief pauses in a journey toward the Philippines and 
on my return. Our open doors there are chiefly among the 
Japanese laborers, imported for work upon the sugar plantations. 
We have opportunities also among our own American people 
there, and America cannot afford to neglect them. 

It is impossible to get anything like an adequate conception of 
our relation to the Philippine Islands as a nation and as a Church 
without a little preliminary attempt at least to reckon with the 
world forces which have thrust us in there. 

God has swung this great nation out on the highway of the On the 
seas between the two great continents upon which live the some- t ^^/ ° 
thing like one thousand millions of our fellow-beings who are yet 
unevangelized. It is not thinkable to a devout student of the 
progress of God's redemptive purposes in the earth that he should 
have so located a great nation such as we are without having in 
view the ultimate use of this nation in bringing these vast popu- 
lations — Africa to our east, and Asia to our west, and the semi- 
civilized to the south of us — to a knowledge of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. The Captain of our salvation is not so poor a tactician 
as to choose a location like ours without an ultimate purpose, 
particularly when one considers the class of people that he has 
brought up here in this choicest portion of the western continent. 
We are not unduly boastful when we say of ourselves that we are 
the consummate product, in physical, mental, and ethical breeding, 
of the six or eight best races that Europe has ever bred. We are 
the result of racial cross-fertilization. I would very greatly dis- 
like to attempt the task of disentangling the pedigree of any 
individual in this congregation. I would find English, Irish, 
Dutch, and Danish — everything practically is represented here. A Racial 
We have the wit of the Irishman, we have the steady qualities of Con S lomerate 
the German, the administrative abilities of the Englishman, the 
canniness of the Scotchman — we have all that is best and highest 
that has been developed under the teaching of an open Bible and 
of free speech anywhere on the face of God's earth. And the man 



136 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



People with 
a Destiny 



The 

Transformed 

Pacific 



The Russian 
Menace 



who does not appreciate that fact has always lived at home and 
has never lived among the degraded nations of the earth, who 
are inbred through countless generations. 

If there is anything that can be affirmed with regard to this 
American people, it is that we have just begun to come to our 
magnificent kingdom as a people in the earth. We are sprung up 
here with a destiny, with a future. We are the only modern 
nation with a seacoast fronting Asia, and Asia holds seven hun- 
dred and fifty millions who are still to be brought under the 
scepter of Jesus Christ the King. 

God works for the establishment of righteousness in the earth 
through three great agencies: the home, of which no one can 
speak with sufficient emphasis as a strategic center for the estab- 
lishment of the cause of Christ — the home, the Church, and the 
State, all divine institutions planted on the earth for the further- 
ance of this kingdom of righteousness. Now, while this nation 
was being bred through something like four centuries we have 
looked out upon the Pacific Ocean and have seen the marvelous 
things being done there. Within the last one hundred and fifty 
years the island continent of Australia has passed under the sway 
of the mightiest Protestant nation on the earth, and within the 
last two hundred years India has come under the same scepter, 
as well as South Africa and New Zealand. Now we have step- 
ping-stones in the Pacific : Hawaii, Guam, a part of Samoa, and 
the flag of a Protestant people floats from Mexico to the frozen 
north. And the man is blind who does not see the ultimate sig- 
nificance of handing over the key positions in the Pacific to such 
a people as God has raised us up to be. 

While that was coming to pass a great menace was creeping 
southward and eastward in Asia, so that those that lived under 
the shadow of it trembled in their hearts in their moments of 
doubt. Russia, pushing southward, eastward, trying to get into 
India, was fenced out of India by the brilliant frontier defense 
policy of Lord Dufferin. The Russian bear smelled along that 
fence, gave it up, and built the trans-Siberian railway that he 
might slice off of eastern Asia what he had failed to gain in west- 
ern Asia. She was reaching eastward, and at the close of the 
Japanese and Chinese war, when the mouse had whipped the ele- 
phant, and it looked as though all the diplomatic policies had been 
knocked into pi, Russia seized Manchuria, overawed Korea, and 



HAWAII AND THE PHILIPPINES 137 

was proceeding with a definite policy of Russianizing Japan, when 
suddenly a wonderful thing happened. An American admiral 
on the Eastern station received a cable message from Washington, 
remarkable for its definiteness and brevity, a fine example of 
telegraphic condensation: "You will proceed to the Philippine 
Islands, locate and destroy the Spanish fleet." In seven days' 
time that typical American had bought two new ships, had 
stripped his ships to fighting form, had steamed seven hundred 
miles, had sunk a fleet, and run the flag of this nation up in the 
face of the Russian menace. And for the second time the speak- 
ing voice of an American fleet had added an archipelago to the 
possible conquests of King Jesus in the Pacific Ocean. 

The significant thing is this, that since our flag was raised over 
that archipelago Russia has stopped her aggressions in southern 
Asia. If she had gone on with them the civilization and Chris- 
tianization of southeastern Asia would have been deferred for hun- 
dreds of years. She would have frozen the very fountains of the 
economic, social, and religious development of a vast people. This 
nation, thrust in there like that, broke the power of Spain "like 
a potter's vessel," and had not a scar left on the "rod of iron" 
with which she did it, either. You have heard broadcast over 
this land stories about the drunkenness and the cruelty of our 
American soldiers. They are not all true, but some of them are, Mission of the 

and more are true than you know about. I have heard things Am erican 
. t •" « Soldier 

that I am not going to tell you. But the same army that drank 

too much of the beer that made Milwaukee infamous, the same 

army that has practiced more or less cruelty here and there against 

a treacherous enemy, that same army has brought to an end an 

intolerable condition among over ten million people, and has set 

them free to be a state among the nations of the earth. That is a 

great fact that will go into history, though there have been flaws 

and faults in the instrument that did the work. I have no 

apology to offer for the cruelties ; we ought not to have committed 

them. Somebody asked me one day why there had been so many. 

I simply said it was because the American nation in carrying out 

a great policy could not get any better instrumentality than men, 

and they were not all of them entirely sanctified — no more than 

Dr. Cartwright was. That is the trouble. If we could have 

secured a type of man of the high ethical development of our 

chairman to-day and of the men on this platform we would 



I38 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

have had no cruelties. But we had to take men, just ordinary 
men. 

An Era of Let me mention three or four things that this mighty nation 

Justice j^ k e g Un to (j m the Philippine Islands, as a great agency of the 

kingdom of God in establishing righteousness in the earth. We 
have given the people the germ of free government. We have 
established courts which from one end of the archipelago to the 
other are grinding out justice. A criminal was arrested. He 
offered the policeman a bribe of five thousand dollars to let him 
go. The policeman reached for the indictment and entered upon 
it, "For offering a bribe to an officer in the performance of duty, 
charge number two." He came up before an American judge, 
and had conveyed a bribe to that man, and another count was 
added to the indictment. When he received his sentence he got 
twenty-five years! That is what I mean by the government es- 
tablishing righteousness. That man upon the bench in that great 
circuit in North Luzon is a minister of God there as much as I 
am when trying to preach salvation by faith. I say this on the 
authority of St. Paul. 

A Shipload of \y e have given these people a new police force. We have given 
them new schools. I saw five hundred and forty-two American 
school-teachers walk down the gangplank off one ship. We have 
exported steel rails, cotton yarn, and all sorts of things, but we 
never exported school-teachers by the shipload before. I pulled 
twenty-eight Methodist Church letters out of that crowd the first 
day, and half a dozen good Presbyterians and Episcopalians, and 
all sorts of people said, "Brother, we have come to help." When 
you think of the old friar, with his immorality, his intolerance, 
his Csesarism, and think of him as the only school-teacher they 
had ever had, and contrast him with the teachers we have sent 
there, it ought to fill your heart with very gladness to think they 
are there from one end of the archipelago to the other. 

Vulgar Th e day has dawned when the language that takes the earth is 

taught in all the schools of the Philippine Islands, and English 
becomes the official language of the Philippine Islands on the first 
day of January, 1907, by the grace of God. Some one has said 
to me, "Why isn't it possible for us to have immediately a great 
Filipino total there?" I said, "Because they are simply split up 
into thirty-four vulgar fractions, and the only way to add frac- 
tions is to reduce them to a common denominator." And you 



HAWAII AND THE PHILIPPINES 1 39 

never can add the vulgar fractions of the Filipino total into 
one great unit until you reduce them to a common linguistic 
denominator, and that policy is entered upon aggressively, even 
prodigally. 

You will agree with me that the powers that be are ordained 
of God, and I believe that God has a mighty mission for America 
in carrying peace and justice and good sanitation and everything 
else to the people who have been fettered in bondage there ever 
since Spain found them three hundred years ago. And I pray 
God that the citizens of this country 7 may carefully and prayer- 
fully exercise their duty toward that vast archipelago. If you 
ever allow the unspeakable infamy of the army canteen to be put 
on the army again you ought never to have forgiveness in this 
world, nor in the world to come. 

The Church finds her open door in the Philippine Islands in Church and 
three or four directions. First, to speak generally, the oppor- cooBeratin 
tunity is before us as a Church to cooperate with the State in 
shedding the light of a Christian civilization over all of insular 
and continental Asia in the southeast. We are within two days' 
steam of China, within five days' steam of Japan, and the same 
from Korea. I can take ship Tuesday morning on the Pasig 
River, in Manila, and in three days sit down to a cannibal feast 
in South Borneo — which, by the way, I have never done. We are 
within easy access to over seven hundred millions of the most 
degraded and at the same time, many of them, the most promising 
people that are still unreached by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

My heart was thrilled one day last summer. I was walking a New Flag 
down the streets of Manila, when I saw several natives of India 
approaching. I knew by their attire where they were from. After 
I had seen them inquiring their way, I said to one of them in his 
own language, "What did you come here for?" And he replied, 
"Sir, in our land we heard that there was a new flag flying here 
under heaven back and forth, and we have come here to work and 
to live under it." Those people had come five thousand miles, 
roughly speaking. They are talking to-day in the little villages 
in the heart of India that there is a new factor in the equation of 
Asiatic life. The Church is to help the nation to put a new 
religious and civil leaven into all those vast masses of national 
meal that are about us in those eastern fields. 

The Church finds its next great chance in the readiness of the 



140 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

Filipinos as raw material which we find at hand. The Filipinos are a very 
Baw Material different people from what many of us suppose them to be. 
While the contention of some that they are a child race may be in 
some degree justified, yet they have had four hundred years of 
European civilization, such as it is, and they are the only people 
in the Orient that ever had it. The flag of Spain and the cross of 
Christ were known in the Philippine Islands two hundred years 
before Australia was opened to civilization. While Spain and 
the Catholic Church had given them a low type of Christianity, 
yet the lowest type of Catholicism is better than the highest type 
of paganism. Even the few rays that shine from the veiled face 
of a Catholic Christ gives more illumination to the darkened 
hearts of men than the brightest rays from the face of Buddha or 
Mohammed. I never forget what Browning says, how splendidly 
he phrases it — you know he makes the old pope say : 

" For somehow 
No one ever yet plucked a rag even 
From the body of the Lord, to wear and mock with, 
But he looked the greater and he was the better." 

So the poor little fragments they have gotten of Christ are 
better than anything the peoples have ever gotten north and west 
of them from the teachings of those other faiths. The nuns have 
worn through all this tract of years the white flower of a blame- 
less life. They have taught the womanhood however much of 
error, but they have lived before them unblamably. When a 
hundred years ago the friars had lapsed into such immorality that 
the nuns could no longer live in the convents without insult the 
nuns withdrew from the convents and built their own places, and 
have lived their own lives clean from the pollution around them. 
He would be a sorry bigot who would deny the honest effort of 
these women to do the Filipino people good. 
Eagerness to In the second place, we find among them a marvelous eagerness 
to hear and a strange readiness to accept the Protestant message. 
The like of it has not been seen in any Roman Catholic country. 
We find a people out of whose minds has been cleansed the poly- 
theistic notion, with its pantheistic base. They are a monotheistic 
people, ready to believe in one holy God, with a redemptive pur- 
pose in Jesus Christ. 

There are seated on the platform two of the men who have had 



Hear 



HAWAII AND THE PHILIPPINES I4I 

to do with sending Methodism there. Bishop McCabe, in his 
usual happy fashion, and really with the eye of a statesman, sent 
there the first missionary, however irregularly it may have been 
done, according to "the little black book." But Bishop James Bishop 
M. Thoburn, the St. Paul of Methodism, was the man who was as ° prophet 
ordered to go on behalf of the society and prospect the field and 
open the work. Our attention was called by him to the Philip- 
pines thirteen years ago. There was an article in the Methodist 
Review in which he called attention to that country as a field for 
Methodism. He said to me once and to others that sat around, 
"God is going to thrust us out into Asia to do a mighty work in 
Borneo, and God will some time open our way into the Philip- 
pines, so suddenly that the world will hold its breath." That 
was more than six years before Dewey made that large and sub- 
stantial contribution to the growing submarine navy of Spain. 
It was very fitting that the bishop should go there officially for 
the society. He preached his first sermon in March, 1899. He 
came back to America. While he was gone a young man returned 
to Manila who had been in banishment for a number of years for 
the crime of owning a Bible, for section 228 of the old penal 
code made it a crime to own a Bible ! He had been seven years 
in banishment. He crept back to the city timidly. He heard one 
of our preachers on the street. It charmed him. He said, "That 
is what I believe, that is what I found in the book, that Jesus can 
save me directly, so that I will know." He went up and made 
himself known. A few Sundays afterward the preacher for the 
meeting did not come, and this man, Nicholas Zamora, was asked Nicholas 
to tell what he had found in the book. The Spirit of God fell 
upon him and upon all that heard him that day. He preached on 
and on and on, glad that in his own city he could take that iden- 
tical copy of the word of God for the owning of which he had 
been hunted like a criminal from the city, and cry in the ears of 
his own people that the Jesus it teaches can save unto the utter- 
most everyone that cometh unto God by him. I wonder that he 
quit. It is so hard to quit when you have an eager audience and 
a weighty mission. When Bishop Thoburn went back there he 
looked him over, went to the cable office, and sent a cablegram 
to our Dr. Leonard asking that Nicholas Zamora be elected to A Cahle 
deacon's orders and transferred to the Malaysia Conference for Transfer 
ordination. They transferred him, and Bishop Thoburn ordained 



142 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

him. He has been preaching ever since with power, to ever- 
increasing audiences, able to hold vast audiences by the hour. He 
is a cultivated man, a fine Latin scholar — at least he knows more 
about Latin than I do; he can quote whole blocks from Cicero 
and Sallust. He had not been preaching more than a month until 
a young sacristan in the Catholic cathedral heard him and was 
stricken to the heart, and he bought a Bible furnished by the 
American Bible Society. If I could not be a missionary of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church I would like to be an agent of the 
Bible Society. He bought a Bible, went home and prayed, and 
finally one night he arose and went into a little room, clasped his 
hands around the bamboo slats that made the floor, and said, "I 
will lie here, Lord, until I have been made a child of God." In a 
few minutes he arose, happy in the Lord, and that young man has 
resigned a government position and has gone to preaching — 
resigned a government position that paid him forty dollars a 
month for a position in the Church that paid him only fifteen dol- 
lars. Just before I left we baptized eighty-seven adult converts 
that that man had led to Jesus Christ in three months' time. 
Multitudes of And then the eagerness of the people ! We had twelve thousand 
average attendance weekly in our forty-five services in Manila and 
suburbs during the last three months of last year. I have a letter 
in my pocket that tells of a young missionary that went from 
Ohio Wesleyan, who wrote me at the end of three months, "We 
are doing nothing but study the language, but one hundred and 
fifty-one people have been received into the Church, and we have 
built a chapel." I would like to know what that man is going to 
do when he gets the language and goes to work. I never saw 
such readiness to hear. I have gone into the provinces on the 
invitation of the people of the city and preached for two or three 
hours to as high as two thousand or twenty-five hundred people, 
who would come in the morning and stay until noon. Bishop 
Warne was in one town sixty-one hours, and during that time 
organized a Methodist church with sixty members, bought a lot, 
and had half the money raised to build a church. The gravity of 
the situation breaks me down as I face those multitudes. The 
thing that was done in that town could be done in a hundred 
other towns and cities. The nation must awake before Rome 
re-forms her lines. There is much loose talk about the withdrawal 
of the friars ; they have been withdrawn for six years from all 



Hearers 



HAWAII AND THE PHILIPPINES 143 

active participation in the work of the Church of Rome in the 
islands, outside of the walled city of Manila, and, bless God, they 
will never go back. But while the people are destitute of that 
leadership is our opportunity, in the name of our King, to set up 
our banners and get our hearing. God help us to be stirred to 
the depths of us to pour out the money and send out the men ! 

The readiness of these people to hear arises very largely from The Friars 
the awful immorality of many of the Spanish friars, because of 
their overweaning severity, and because of their greed. I don't 
like to rake over that filth-heap. It is history, but it will never 
be repeated, excepted to say that I was conversant with a great 
number of children of friars. I was introduced in one afternoon 
to the six children of a friar, only two of whom were born of the 
same mother. Daughters have been wrenched from the family 
home, husbands sent into banishment, and yet there are people 
saying in this country that that is all talk. I wish it were all talk. 
But because the friars have alienated them these people come more 
readily to us. They have a wonderful readiness to read our 
literature. I found a man last summer reading aloud to fifty 
men a translation of an advertisement of Hood's Sarsaparilla ! 
From five to ten per cent of them can read Spanish; twenty to 
thirty per cent can read their own vernacular. But in all their 
homes they have absolutely no reading matter, and they are as 
thirsty as a gravel pit. O, how they want the refreshing rain of 
religious literature, of good literature ! We are now publishing Thirst for 
the Philippine Christian Advocate; it is the baby of the Advocate Blading 
family, but it is a self-supporting baby; we have got over four 
hundred and fifty Filipino paid subscriptions. A good man in 
Kansas City the other day gave us a one-thousand-dollar press, 
and a good Methodist minister who had made some money on a 
land deal gave us an electric motor. We are going to get out a 
series of booklets. We are going to scatter periodical literature 
and tract literature and fill their minds with the things that are 
honest and lovely and of good report. 

What kind of converts are we getting ? They are mostly poor ; The Kind of 
they are from the common people, who have felt the blight of Co nverts 
Roman Catholic oppression most severely. Let me tell you just 
one instance. Here is a fisherman who was teaching a Bible 
class. A Filipino priest came to him and said, "You must quit 
teaching this class ; you are a member of the Catholic Church. " 



144 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Imperative 



Helping 
Together by 
Prayer 



The man argued a little, and the Filipino priest struck him down 
with a chair. While he was down he prayed unto God for the 
conversion of the priest. Now, I believe that is about as much 
religion as you have, brother. One of our young girls, very 
clearly saved, a sweet little girl of thirteen, was stricken with the 
cholera. A local priest came to her and said, "You must take the 
sacrament of extreme unction, for you are going to die." "No," 
she said, "last May I let Jesus into my heart, and he fills my soul 
with gladness. I will simply go to be with Jesus. If I die I 
don't want your sacraments." So she died, free of entanglements. 
But the eagerness of the people to hear and to come in is ex- 
tremely gratifying. 

What do we need in the Philippine Islands ? We need first the 
living messenger. We want a total of twenty-five of the best 
young and middle-aged men that can be found in the Methodist 
ministry. You can afford to come out there, my brethren, to do 
something to build the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. We 
want four new men this fall, and next year six men. Then we 
want women missionaries to train the women. We want two 
representative churches in the city of Manila to get at the Filipinos 
on one side of the river and the Americans on the other side of 
the river. The Filipino church will cost twenty thousand dollars 
at the lowest figure. We could fill it every day in the week. O, 
what a power it would be in that great city of three hundred 
thousand people, soon to be a million ! We need it. 

We need lastly, brethren, the upholding power of your prayers. 
How it sweeps over us as we stand amid those problems ! "It is 
not by might, nor by an army, but by my spirit, saith Jehovah of 
hosts," that we must bring those people to Christ. Pray for us, 
that our health may be preserved and our message borne home to 
the people by the deathless energies of the Holy Ghost, that the 
marvelous victories of early Methodism may be manifested all 
over that archipelago. So we shall contribute to those islands a 
Christian manhood, sanctified by the Holy Ghost, and made to 
stand foursquare to every wind that blows ! 



THE OPEN DOOR IN LATIN COUNTRIES 145 

THE OPEN DOOR IN LATIN COUNTRIES 

Bishop C. C. McCabe 

I am glad the theme recognizes the fact that the door in Latin a Door Long 
countries is open. It was not always open. There was a time closed 
when it was closed, and it was closed for a long time. It was 
closed for fully three hundred and eighty years. Can you imagine 
what could be the condition of a people among whom it was 
illegal to read or own a Bible, or to have a Christian service in 
one's own home, according to the dictates of one's own con- 
science ; illegal for a child to learn by heart the 23d Psalm, "The 
Lord is my shepherd ; I shall not want" ? And yet that is what the 
closed door has meant to the Latin race. 

It was not always open. It was not open when the Spanish 
king, Philip II, sent the great Armada to England to destroy 
English liberty. He sent one hundred and twenty-six ships of 
war, and he sent thirty thousand soldiers. They failed, as we all 
know. Only two thousand of those soldiers ever saw their homes 
again, and only four or five of the ships ever got back to Spain. 
The Spanish historians have always charged it upon the storm; 
they said there was such a great storm that it destroyed their 
ships. It seems to me the storm would beat upon the little 
English ships as heavily as upon the great Spanish ships. The 
Spanish went back defeated and discomfited. The door was 
closed then. The door was closed when the Latin race under- 
took to take from the Valois and the Albigenses their religious 
liberty. It was closed when Philip of Spain undertook to chastise 
the Netherlands and compel the people to give up their Bible 
and their religion. But they didn't succeed, for a Dutchman is 
stubborn ; he is stubborn when he is born, and can't help it, but 
when he gets religion he is ten times as stubborn as he was 
before. And for eighty years those Dutchmen contended for the 
faith as it is in Jesus Christ. But all that time amid these Latin 
races the door was closed, closed for three hundred and eighty 
years, closed so long that the hinges grew rusty, and it did not 
seem as though the door could ever be opened. 

I once saw a cartoon in Mexico that interested me amazingly, a Significant 
It was the picture of a Spaniard carrying on his back a fat Cartoon 
priest, with great labor walking along with him ; the priest, 
10 



I46 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

however, was smiling and content. Underneath the feet of the 
Spaniard was the map of Spain and of Portugal and of France 
and of Italy. That was published broadcast in Mexico. I won- 
dered at it. I was glad to see it there, for it seemed to me there 
was a great sermon in it. I sent a copy of it to the Freeman's 
Journal, of New York, which is the greatest Roman Catholic 
journal of this country, and asked them to republish it, and they 
would not do it. I suggested that if they should republish it I 
would like to make an amendment to that map — I would like to 
add to that map Mexico, and all South America, and all Central 
America, and Cuba, and Porto Rico, and the south of Ireland, 
and a part of Canada. The editor paid no attention to my letter, 
because my letter was in response to something he did — he gave 
me a column and a half of solid abuse for something I had said 
about our work in Mexico. But that cartoon had a great lesson — 
the burden of the Spanish race — and for all these years that has 
been true. 

The door has been closed, but it is open now. Thank God, it 
is open ! Let us be glad that the door is open for the Latin races. 
And here we stand, confronting one hundred and seventeen 
millions of human beings who need the Gospel, who are waiting 
for it, who are glad that we are preaching it to them ; and many 
of them welcome us with open arms and glad hearts. 
Gleams of Through that open door there come gleams of light. We have 

Light in j n M ex { COj which is a part of the Latin race, one hundred and 

twenty-five congregations, with five thousand two hundred and 
twenty-one members, including probationers. We have ten 
thousand besides under our influence. W T e have nearly five thou- 
sand children in our day schools, and three thousand in our Sab- 
bath schools. Our schools are turning out such good grades of 
teachers that the government is anxious to secure them to teach 
in the government schools. More than eight thousand dollars 
was raised last year for self-support. In addition to all this we 
have a printing press in Mexico which is turning out five million 
pages of Christian literature every year, and that literature is 
scattered all through the country. I had occasion to come across 
one man who was influenced by a little leaflet that came to him 
from that press. One clay I was riding on a train, and a Mexican 
went through calling for Bishop McCabe. When I made myself 
known to him I had to speak through an interpreter. He said 



THE OPEN DOOR IN LATIN COUNTRIES 147 

that he lived five miles away, in the mountains, and that he had 
heard that his bishop was passing through, and he had come 
down to make him a little offering; and he gave me a little 
basket, containing nine eggs and two quarts of beans which he 
had brought all the way from the mountains. It was a very 
humble offering indeed, but it did me good to look into his face A Humble 
and realize that he was a converted man. I said to him, "How erm& 
were you brought to Christ?" He said that the presiding elder 
gave him one of those little tracts, and he read it, and it brought 
conviction to his heart, and he was converted. And he said, "My 
wife and children have been converted, and I have started a 
prayer meeting in my house." There is now a little congregation 
there, and they are going to build a church after a while, all from 
one of those leaflets. 

These are some of the gleams that come to us from Mexico. Gifts that 
We have splendid schools there. We have a splendid church in u lpy 
the city of Pachuca. After I got through preaching my morning 
sermon at the Conference I said to the congregation, "I will give 
you five hundred dollars if in the next half hour you will raise 
six thousand dollars to build a church here in this town." We 
raised five thousand dollars, and in the afternoon we raised the 
other thousand, so we had the six thousand dollars, and since 
then Bishop Hamilton has dedicated a church that cost over 
eighteen thousand dollars gold. It is the finest Protestant church 
in all Mexico, and it all came from the little gift of five hundred 
dollars that somebody had given me. It is always safe to give 
me money, for it will go right to the spot and do something like 
that all along the line. The finest Protestant church in Mexico 
out of a gift of five hundred dollars ! 

We have a splendid business school at Queretaro. One Sun- A Business 
day evening the principal of it said to me: "I have letters from 
all over the country, asking me to take boys, but I cannot take 
any more. I wish I could finish this building. If I could I would 
say yes to all those applications." "Well," I said, "Brother 
Velasco, how much will it take to finish this building?" "It will 
take three thousand dollars in Mexican money." I said, "When 
would you like to begin ?" "Monday morning." This was Satur- 
day night. I said, "All right, send for your carpenter and go 
ahead." And he did it. When I got home I telegraphed a rich 
man, "I want you to meet me at the railroad station, because I 



148 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Size of South 
America 



Schools for 
Ecuador 



want to go home and spend the night with you." He was there. 
On the way I told him the story, and he leaned on my knee and 
looked me in the face, and said, "I will give you a thousand dol- 
lars on one condition — and that is that you will go back next 
year and do it again." So that school has been enlarged, those 
boys have been taken into the school, and there is a gleam of light 
coming through the open door there. 

The Woman's Foreign Missionary Society has splendid schools 
in Mexico. I wish you could see those children, with their eager 
faces sitting before you while you are talking about Christ. It 
seems to me the women are doing no better work anywhere in 
the world than in Mexico. 

I have just been in South America, and this is my second visit 
there. It is a great thing to go to South America. That name 
has a very different meaning to me now than it had before I 
went there. I knew nothing about it. If South America were 
one great nation, and all those republics were states, there would 
be one state of it, Brazil, which would come within one hundred 
thousand square miles of being as large as the whole United 
States put together. And then there would be another state in it 
that would make four states as big as Texas, our largest State. 
I was amazed at its vastness. We sailed day after day down the 
western coast, and it seemed to me that I never had the slightest 
conception of the magnitude of South America until then. 

We landed at Guayaquil. Dr. Wood has done a great work, 
and through the open door we can see many a gleam of light 
coming from Ecuador. He went up to Quito at the request of 
the president of that republic, and gave him a plan of public in- 
struction, which was adopted by the president and the cabinet, 
and the congress passed a bill adopting it and giving one hundred 
thousand dollars to carry it into active operation. What was his 
plan? To have three training schools for teachers, and con- 
nected with each school there should be a model school, so that 
the teachers in training could see just how a school ought to 
be conducted. A magnificent plan! Two of those schools have 
been formed and have been in successful operation for some time. 
It was feared that when the new president came into power he 
would not favor these schools. But he was more in earnest about 
them than his predecessor was, and the schools are going on. A 
tragedy occurred. The consul of the republic of Ecuador in the 



THE OPEN DOOR IN LATIN COUNTRIES I49 

city of Valparaiso was very much in favor of these schools. It 
was through his advice that two of our best teachers in Santiago 
were taken from that school and sent to Ecuador to begin those 
schools there. He received a letter one night warning him that 
his life was in danger. He paid no attention to it, and one night 
he was assassinated in the streets of Valparaiso; he was found 
dead in the morning. What was the effect upon Ecuador ? They 
immediately passed a bill that no priest or bishop should ever 
again be a member of the house of representatives or of the senate 
of Ecuador — that was the effect of it. 

I wish you would preach a sermon on this text — "Ye can do civil and 
nothing against truth but for truth." Ecuador has determined Religious 
that civil and religious liberty shall prevail all through that coun- 
try. They stoned Dr. Wood. He is as brave as a lion, but a riot 
was stirred up against him by a priest. While they were stoning 
him, one of the Methodist preachers stepped out and said, "Look 
out, that is a Yankee !" They stopped, but he had been hit once. 
What was the effect? The students that stoned him were de- 
prived of the privilege of graduating in the university, and the 
government sent for the archbishop and ordered that priest de- 
posed, and then they ordered that a sermon on religious liberty 
should be preached in that pulpit, and it was done ; and so, after 
all, though that man was a martyr to his zeal for the cause of 
Christian education, the great cause has gone on in Ecuador. 

We landed at Callao, Peru. There we have two good schools, Place of the 
and in Lima two good congregations. It is wonderful to see Dr. n< l ulslt1011 
Wood, living on the street known as the Place of the Inquisition, 
where he can look out of his window and see the old inquisition 
over there across the street and know that out of its gloomy por- 
tals many processions of Protestant Christians have marched to 
be burned to death. In a Spanish book, by the aid of a translator, 
I read how the women spoke for front seats upon the balconies 
when those people were burned to death. There is no blinking it, 
there is no forgetting it; these are the things that transpired 
when the door was closed and we could not get into these Latin 
countries. 

In Peru there is a gleam of light which comes in this way. 
When Francisco Penzotti was in prison for selling Bibles a mem- 
ber of the house of representatives rose in his place one day, and 
moved that a greater measure of religious liberty be given to the 



150 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A Perforated 
Tent 



Fowler and 

Grant 

Schools 



people. It was voted down immediately, and that man was 
burned in effigy in Arequipa, the largest town in Peru except 
Lima. But now eight of the leading members of that house have 
signed their names to a bill calling for the abrogation of section 
four of the constitution, which declares that the religion of the 
republic is Roman Catholic and no other will be tolerated. There 
is a gleam of light there. 

Religious liberty is coming, even in belated Peru, and if it 
comes in Peru, it will come in Portugal, and the door will be 
open in all the Latin races of the earth. 

Then to Iquique, Chile. A year ago I found our people wor- 
shiping under a large tent, given to them by a man from Chicago. 
One night I was preaching there, and I looked up and saw a big 
hole just above me. "What made that hole?" I asked. "O," 
said the preacher, "last night the boys threw stones and a stone 
came right down here on the platform through that hole." "Are 
they going to do that to-night?" I asked. "I don't know." 
"Where shall I sit to-night?" "Sit a little to the right of the 
hole," was the reply, and I moved my chair a little. I said, "You 
need a church here." He answered, "Yes, we do, but we haven't 
even the money to buy the lot." I gave them a thousand dollars 
to buy the lot. This year I dedicated that church, and we only 
need about six hundred dollars to seat it and to finish it, and that 
I pledged, and then we dedicated that church to the worship of 
Almighty God. I was amused at the Roman Catholic bishop. 
Saturday just before we dedicated the church he went to the 
mayor and asked him to stop the dedication, saying, "Those 
Methodists have got a tower on their church." The mayor said, 
"I don't care how many towers the Methodists have." "Well," 
said the bishop, "they will put a bell in next." The mayor said, 
"Wait until they get the bell in, and come to me when they get 
the bell." So our church was dedicated, and I had the privilege 
of preaching in it when we had five hundred people in the con- 
gregation. Now, that is a light that comes through the open door. 

At Iquique we have one of those splendid schools established 
by Messrs. Fowler and Grant. It cost them two hundred thou- 
sand dollars to build three schools, of which this is one. I wish 
we could find another Grant and another Fowler to establish just 
such a school in the city of Lima, for we need one there, and 
beyond all description we need a church there. 



THE OPEN DOOR IN LATIN COUNTRIES 151 

Down at Valparaiso, where we have a congregation, there was a Growing 
a preacher by the name of E. E. Wilson, from Iowa. He said, Con & re § a tion 
"When Bishop Newman went through here, nine years ago, he 
called for the Methodists, and found we had four in the whole 
city." The bishop said to them, "Be faithful, and the Church 
will come to your aid some day." And I now saw that great 
congregation of five hundred souls before me in a rented hall. I 
couldn't help it ; I said to them, "I will pledge you two thousand 
dollars if you will build a church here." They have gone on with 
their contributions, but I don't know what they have.- That 
church will surely be built. 

On to Santiago, and then to Concepcion, to see the other great Flocking of 

schools of Fowler and Grant, and then across the Andes ranee j™ig*aat» 

to Argentina 
over into Argentina. What a trip that was ! I have had many 

trips in the service of the Church, but never one that impressed 
me so much as that trip over the Andes. Then down through 
that great country where there are two hundred and forty million 
acres of land that will yield wheat, at least twenty bushels to the 
acre. Four billion bushels of wheat will some day be raised in 
Argentina in one year. Don't you think we ought to be there to 
preach to those farmers and home builders that are coming? 
That whole plateau is going to be filled with the homes of the 
people. They are coming from all lands. One hundred thousand 
came from Italy last year. When I found how many were com- 
ing from Italy I sent a missionary after them to plant the Church 
of Jesus Christ among those Italian immigrants. That country is 
taking our agricultural implements. Don Nicholas Lowe told me 
he counted eighty cars of agricultural implements from the United 
States going to the interior of Argentina in one day. That means 
that a great population is coming there all the time. I wish we 
had a thousand Methodist preachers to send into Argentina at 
one time. 

There is a man of Buenos Ayres named Senor Perody, and he The 
is secretary of the senate of Argentina, and has been for twenty- 5f flj?" 1 * 
five years. When his twenty-five years were expired the senate 
offered him a pension equal to his salary, and offered to allow 
him to relinquish work and do nothing for the rest of his life 
except to draw his salary for his faithful services. He said, "I 
don't want to be idle, I would rather keep my position." Now 
think of that, a senate composed almost entirely of Roman 



152 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Spirit of 

Persecution 

Passing 



Superstitions 



Catholics electing a Protestant to be their secretary. There is a 
gleam of light in that; it shows that the time for proscription 
and for intolerance is passing away in that country. 

There is one more thing that I wish to speak of to illustrate the 
fact that this spirit of intolerance is passing away. There was a 
man by the name of G. W. Morris, a minister in the Church of 
England, but he was converted in our church. It is wonderful 
how the fruit of Methodism hangs over the wall all over the 
world. Morris heard the congregation singing, and he went in, 
and they were singing, "In the cross of Christ I glory," and he 
told me that standing there, joining in that hymn, he gave his 
heart to God, and was converted in an instant. He became a 
missionary in the city, in the employ first of our Church, and 
afterward of the Church of England. They were rich and they 
gave him money, and he has collected eighteen hundred children 
together in his day schools. He needed money, and some of the 
statesmen of Argentina said, "That man must have help," for he 
had an industrial school on week days, and it was moved that he 
should have a certain amount of money — I think it was five hun- 
dred Argentina dollars every month — to help him in his work. 
One bishop made a great speech against it, but when they came 
to take the vote every man in the house of representatives voted 
to make that grant except that priest — and they were all Roman 
Catholics. You see that the spirit of persecution is passing away. 

There are some people in our Church that don't think much of 
our missions among the Roman Catholics ; they don't think they 
are needed. Come with me to a place called Juncal. There is 
a great church. They have put a million dollars in it, and they 
say it will cost another million. In that big church there is a 
little doll, about eighteen inches high, dressed in satin, crowned 
with diamonds, and bespangled with jewels; and sometimes as 
many as twelve thousand people will come in one day to visit 
that shrine, and they fall down and worship that doll. Don't 
you think they need the Gospel? It was amazing to me to see 
that on the wall there was a stone of marble, and on that marble 
was carved the statement that Leo XIII had sent his blessing to 
that shrine. It was called the miracle-working image. Those 
people really imagine the image works miracles ! They say that 
two hundred years ago, when a man was driving a yoke of bul- 
locks drawing an image of the Virgin, the oxen stopped at that 



THE OPEN DOOR IN LATIN COUNTRIES 1 53 

place. They tried to goad them on, but they would not go any 
farther. The crowd shouted, "A miracle! A miracle! The 
Virgin wants a church here!" So they stopped there and built 
a church, and for two hundred years they have been kneeling 
around that doll. 

On the west coast there is a shrine which had fifty thousand Miracles 
worshipers this year, and three miracles were wrought. They ghrine 
say the Holy Ghost came down in the form of a butterfly, and one 
man with one leg went in and worshiped at the shrine a few 
minutes, and he came out with two legs. And a priest fell from 
a great height and got up and walked away. They tell the people 
these things and the people believe them. But the worst of it 
was that for three or four days fifty thousand people were lying 
around on those hillsides, and all kinds of immorality was 
practiced among them. Don't they need the Gospel ? Never say 
again that they do not. The door is open in these Latin countries ; 
let us go into it with all our might and preach to them the Gospel 
of the Son of God. 

One of the most delightful events in my life happened in Expectations 
Montevideo. We had a church there for a long time, but it had ^P* 886 
grown too small, and I wanted to see another erected right away. 
One night, at a prayer meeting, without telling anyone what I 
was going to do, I started a collection, and we got eight thousand 
dollars. It was an astonishing collection; I was amazed. I 
expected a thousand dollars that night, but we got eight thousand 
dollars. The archbishop had helped me wonderfully; he had 
written a book, and in that book he had done me the honor to 
mention me as coming down there as a minister plenipotentiary 
from a hostile Church, prepared to lead the people away from 
their ancestral faith. That excited curiosity, and two of his mem- 
bers came to hear me that night at the prayer meeting. One of 
them gave one thousand dollars in gold, and another five hundred 
dollars in gold, and I said, "O, that mine enemy would write a 
book! — would write another book!" We raised eight thousand 
dollars, and we increased it on the Sabbath to twelve thousand 
dollars, and I just heard yesterday that they have laid the corner 
stone, that the money is collected, and a church worth forty 
thousand dollars is going up there in Montevideo. 

So everywhere throughout the country these great things are An Open Bible 
going on. The door is open, and the light is gleaming through it, 



154 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

We have a great duty to these Latin races. There is a man in 
France by the name of M. Demolins who has written a book 
called The Superiority of the Anglo-Saxon Race and the Reasons 
for It. He gives all the reasons but one. He begins with child- 
hood and goes on through the schools and gives alt the reasons but 
one, and that is the difference in their religion— there is no use 
blinking the matter. They have not had the Bible and we have. 
And now it is our duty to give them the word of God in rich 
abundance. I met one priest there that was giving them the 
Bible as he thought; his name was Padre Vaughan, a brother 
of Cardinal Vaughan, of England, and he told me he had dis- 
tributed one hundred thousand copies of the Scriptures in all 
South America. He gave me a copy of it, and I turned to the 
eleventh chapter of Hebrews and read as follows: "By faith 
Jacob blest his sons, worshiping the top of his staff. In our 
translation it reads, "Jacob blest his sons, leaning upon the top 
of his staff." Think of the grand old man of Peniel worshiping 
a cane in his dying hours ! That is what they taught in that copy 
of the Holy Scriptures. But let us have the Bible all through 
South America, and we will show you regenerated republics in a 
few years. 
A Methodist I sent one man up in Bolivia. He asked to go. Some Metho- 
in Bolivia, dist ministers are like Fitz- James when Roderick Dhu asked him 
what right he had to be in those mountains, and he replied: 

" Brave Gael, my pass, in danger tried, 
Hangs in my belt, and by my side. 



And, if a path be dangerous known, 
The danger's self is lure alone." 



There are some Methodist ministers of which that might be said, 
"The danger's self is lure alone." That man went up alone into 
the mountains of Bolivia, with his wife, carrying his Bible with 
him. He is going all through the country. He did this very wise 
thing — he went to the president of the republic and got permis- 
sion to circulate the Holy Scriptures in the province of La Paz. 
Permission was granted, and that lifted him over the heads of 
the priests and bishops, and he is going yet from home to home, 
from hamlet to hamlet, circulating God's holy word. He is a 
German, though he speaks the Spanish language very well. 



THE OPEN DOOR IN EASTERN ASIA 1 55 

These are some of the lights that gleam through the open Confident of 
door. I never felt more confident in my life that we are going Vlctor y 
to have a glorious victory among the Latin race than I do to-day. 
I have just been in Italy; I have seen our great work there. I 
have just been in some of the nations of Europe, and I have seen 
how the glorious work is going on there ; and I say that I am a 
more confirmed optimist than ever. I believe that the day is 
coming when there will be no need for a man to say to his 
neighbor, "Know the Lord; for all shall know him, from the 
least unto the greatest !" 



THE OPEN DOOR IN EASTERN ASIA 

Bishop D. H. Moore 

The three great empires of Japan, Korea, and China constitute, 
in the division of our ecclesiastic territory, the division known 
as eastern Asia, whose open doors for the Gospel I am to bring 
to your thought. I have forty minutes to speak of one third of 
the human family, forty minutes to divide between three empires. 
My share is fair and right, for my brother who is to follow me 
has also a vast constituency; and, all together, the speakers this 
afternoon have the world divided among them. 

Originally these people must have been the same. There is the A Common 
fact of the common written language that stamps them with a ngin 
common origin, and there is the survival of customs and usages 
which mark them as kindred peoples. The dominion of China 
extended within our time over Korea, and there was dispute as 
to its extension over Japan itself, which in the remote past was 
proud to acknowledge China as her overlord. And so these three, 
for all practical purposes, may be considered as one. Their doors 
were never opened until comparatively recently. 

Ancient history tells nothing about China save the fact of her The Impact of 
self-determined isolation; a supposedly magnificent empire, self- e es 
centered, abundant in all resources, satisfied with herself, and 
unwilling to enter into any contact and competition with the world 
beyond, apparently fearful lest her idyllic peace and plenty might 
be disturbed by the rude shock of outward commerce. Not until 
a comparatively recent period did the impact of Western com- 
merce and the great development of the intercommunication of 



I56 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

nations make a breach in the walls of Chinese exclusion. Then 
the merchants of Venice carried back to Europe two of the inven- 
tions of the Chinese, which, with the manner's compass, revolu- 
tionized society, overturned governments, and laid the foundation 
for those mighty cosmic movements that are in process to-day, 
the result of which will be China's final and glorious emancipa- 
tion. For the mariner's compass, gunpowder, and the printing 
press are the mightiest agencies of human reform and reconstruc- 
tion that the world has known — all of them the gifts of China to 
the world. 
War between But it was reserved for the conflict between China and some 
Japan and Q f ^ ev p rovmces to give a complete opening, undisputed and in- 
disputable, of the gates of China to the commerce and the religion 
of the outlying civilizations. Perhaps you have recalled already 
that this was due to that war between China and Japan, which 
settled once and forever the question of Japan's dependence upon 
China, and the relations of Korea to China. Upon that war 
turned this great question, receiving its final solution in the over- 
whelming victories won by the Japanese over the Dragon Flags 
of the hoary empire of China. The guns of Japan battered down 
the walls of Chinese conservativism and exclusiveness, and from 
that day until the end of time those walls never can be rebuilt. 
They are dominated by the guns of Japan, that newest among the 
mighty nations of the earth. 
The Magic of And you may as well now, as at a later period in what I have 
Fleet to say > P aus e long enough to understand that it was the United 

States of America that opened Japan to the civilization which 
made her splendid victory an easy possibility. You are to re- 
member that it was the guns, shotted but never discharged, the 
guns of the American navy, under Commodore Perry, that broke 
open the Land of the Morning Sun, and gave to all that Eastern 
world the vivifying and transforming touch of Western civiliza- 
tion. It was the religion of our Lord Jesus Christ that raised 
up this nation and girded it with this mighty and irresistible 
power. The Providence of God led the United States into such 
relations with Japan as opened Japan to the new civilization, and 
made her the controlling factor in the great questions of the East ; 
so that when Japan swept in victory ,pver the borders of China, 
when she registered her superiority on the bloody plains of 
Pyeng Yang, when she stormed the almost impregnable fortresses 



THE OPEN DOOR IN EASTERN ASIA 1 57 

of Port Arthur, and when she swept down the coast and took the 
magnificent island of Formosa, when she was ready and able to 
lead her resistless hosts on to the capital of the very empire itself, 
so that other Christian nations had to interpose to preserve the 
integrity of China — that was the end of the old and the beginning 
of the new eastern Asia. 

Take these facts also into consideration: See how on every commerce, 
side the growth of commerce and the eager spirit of scientific Science, and 
inquiry and investigation — these two coordinate divisions of the 
grand army of human progress, trade and science — joined with 
that mightiest of the trinity of forces for the civilization and 
regeneration of mankind, our holy religion, have marched con- 
verging upon the great empire of China to solve the question of 
the East forever. The doors that were only ajar, and then 
pushed back a little farther so that a dim and imperfect view of 
what lay beyond was secured, now by the third great act in the 
unfoldings of God's Providence have been flung wide open, and 
our eyes are permitted to feast, in a very revel of wonder and 
amazement, upon the riches and possibilities of that great empire. 
For could anything but Divine Providence have made the wrath 
of men so to praise him as to lead the empress dowager into 
such a bewilderment of madness as to bring down upon herself 
and upon her empire at once the united power and wrath of the 
civilized nations of the world? That keen and subtle diplomacy 
which through all the past had been her mightiest weapon of 
defense and offense ; her ability to play one nation against an- 
other and so to neutralize the efforts of the peoples of the world 
to secure adequate treaty conventions and commercial privileges — 
all this she lost forever when at one blow she smote all the official A Lost 
representatives of the mightiest nations of the earth, and sent 
hurrying to her citadel the strength and resources of the Christian 
world. The powers that marched into China were Christian 
powers, every one of them. They came from the east and from 
the west and from the north and from the south. They bore 
banners of different devices, but over every banner, flaming in 
the sky, was the sign of Constantine, made new for this last 
crusade for human liberty and for the triumph of the Gospel of 
Jesus Christ. 

God has strange ways of introducing his truth. The Old Tes- 
tament is full of instances where by means that seem to us cruel, 



Position 



158 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

terrible in their devastation, God, who is the ruler of mankind, 
has so carried forward his cause that, while giving to all their 
just dues and extending to all a charity and love as infinite as his 
own immortality, he has set forward the standards of ultimate 
truth and brought mankind nearer together in the community of 
those interests and blessings in which their highest prosperity and 
noblest destiny shall be realized. So it was here. The last door 

The Upheaval of China was burst asunder by that union of the imperial power 
of China with the unauthorized acts of the Boxer bands of the 
empire. This heaved from its hinges the last door; and China, 
from Peking to the uttermost borders of her magnificent empire, 
is now by imperial edict free and safe for the advance of the 
Christian missionary. Recent outbreaks in Szchuen Province 
are only the guerrilla warfare that has been waged from the 
beginning, and doubtless will be waged until that happy time 
comes, hastened by your increased devotion and consecration, 
when China shall feel in every fiber the regenerating grace and 
matchless power of the living God. Sir Robert Hart says, truly : 
"If, in spite of official opposition and popular irritation, Chris- 
tianity were to make a mighty advance it might so spread as to 
convert China into the friendliest of the friendly powers and the 
foremost patron of all that makes for peace and good will; and 
thus prick the Boxer balloon and disperse the noxious gas which 
threatens to swell the race-hatred program, and to poison and 
imperil the world's future." Yes, these outbreaks will occur, my 
hearers, until you and I and Christians everywhere realize that we 
are the gauge upon the great wheel of missionary progress. For 
our own sake, for the sake of the multitudes of the earth, let us 
see to it that, so far as in us lies, an ending shall be put once and 
forever to the possibility of such outbreaks, by bringing this 
great country to the foot of the cross. 

China Open So China is now open for evangelistic work everywhere. Even 

in the province of Szchuen, which seems to be the storm center, 
our ministers and native pastors are going up and down preaching 
Christ, and at times to those who have fled for refuge into the 
cities. They are compelled now and then, as lately in the city of 
Tsichou, to take up arms to reinforce inadequate garrisons, and 
to help drive off the Boxers hordes that lay siege to the defenses. 
But the power of the government is now on the side of religious 
toleration. It is no longer behind and supporting these Boxer 



THE OPEN DOOR IN EASTERN ASIA 1 59 

movements. The Boxers are outlaws, and every magistrate in 
the empire who fails to the utmost of his ability to meet and resist 
all endeavors to reopen the lamentable troubles of the past is 
promptly removed from his office, and if his offense is glaring his 
head is removed from his shoulders. 

Do not for a moment believe that China has been converted Awakened, 
into a love for foreigners or for Christianity. I would have very Transformed 
little respect for her if such an immediate transformation could 
be wrought. If, with the recollection of the outrages she has 
suffered from Christian powers ; if, smarting under the retribu- 
tion that has recently been inflicted upon her by the allied armies ; 
if, after the atrocities that under Christian flags have been inflicted 
upon her and which can but leave scars and sores hard to heal 
and wounds that will continue to vex her for generations to 
come — if after all these things she had been so soon converted 
into love for foreigners or for Christianity, then human nature 
would contradict the principles of its own creation. But I believe 
that, through and through, China has come to realize that the 
past is forever past, and that she has entered upon a new era. 
She looks to the right and to the left, and asks what must be 
done to meet the emergency ; and, astonished at the unparalleled 
growth of Japan, seeks through her to attain the same power. 
Herein lies an immediate peril ; for Japanese leaders seek to 
adopt the material advantages of Christian civilization, without 
the informing and sustaining spirit of Christianity itself. But 
let China secure the colossal power of Western civilization, un- 
tempered and uncontrolled by the vital principles of Christianity, 
and she becomes "The Yellow Peril" that has haunted the dream 
of Europe for a generation. Hence the supreme need of re- 
doubling our efforts to regenerate Japan, and to seize upon 
China's eager desire for Western learning as affording a wide- 
open door to plant and multiply positively Christian schools 
of the best quality; so that with the consciousness of power 
China will have also the consciousness of love and obligation, 
to bind her in friendly intercourse with the peoples of the 
world. 

So we have a wide-open door ; not only to preach the Gospel clamor for 
everywhere, but also to establish Christian schools everywhere. Christian 
The clamor for these schools is incessant. It rolls like the thunder 
of the surf upon the coast. It is more than a Macedonian cry, 



i6o 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Healing 
Touch 



Proclaiming 
Evangels 



repeated by the four hundred million people of that vast empire — 
"Come over and educate us." 

The hospital is another open door. Through the hospital, in- 
fluences are carried into the very center of the domestic and the 
political life of China. Opportunities are afforded by our hospi- 
tals and dispensaries, through our consecrated and skillful 
physicians and surgeons, to get a mighty hold upon the people. 
The almost miracles, wrought by Western science, sanctified by 
the Spirit of the living God, become so many living witnesses of 
the blessedness of the Gospel ; and thus prepare the way for the 
advancement of Christ's kingdom. 

Open doors. I have not time to enumerate the places, but all 
China is open. Look at the map, put your finger anywhere and 
if your Church is not represented there by its missionary forces 
some other Church equally good is there, represented by its mis- 
sionary forces. But what are these among so many? Let us see 
to it that they are reinforced by hundreds of thousands of men 
and women of the very highest culture, of the most undoubted 
piety, men and women who have a divine call to this foreign 
field, supported by the generous gifts and sustained by the unceas- 
ing prayers of the Church. 

So we have these three great doors opening into one common 
nation. They are so many different entrances to the same great 
center, so many different ways to the same great result. For our 
schools, if they are missionary schools, must be evangelistic 
agencies ; our hospitals, if they are missionary hospitals, must be 
evangelistic agencies ; and the preaching of the Gospel must be 
from hearts that know they have been redeemed, and that have 
the witness of the Spirit that they are born again, and that can 
preach with the demonstration of the Spirit and with power the 
unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ. Once put that kind of living 
power into China, and we have the great problem of the occupa- 
tion of the field practically solved. 

There are one or two encouraging facts that I must name be- 
fore yielding the floor to one so much more deserving of your 
hearing — that noble man who has given his life for India and 
who stands before us to-day a shadow of his former self, the 
substance having been laid upon the altar — to Bishop Thoburn, 
and to Bishop Hartzell, the worthy successor of our matchless 
Bishop Taylor. 



THE OPEN DOOR IN EASTERN ASIA l6l 

First, we are apt to forget that there is a vast force at work in The Worth of 
China, in a way different from ours, and that sometimes seems Romanism 
to us reprehensible and faulty ; and yet a force that has been 
working for generations when we were asleep as to our duty. I 
condemn the faults and deplore the mistakes of the Roman 
Catholic Church ; but I thank God with all my heart that the 
Roman Catholic Church exists to-day. If it were in my power 
by a touch of my hand I would not blot that Church out of 
existence. If the laying down of my life upon the altar were the 
only price by which that Church could be perpetuated in the 
world, my life would be a glad offering for its perpetuation; 
because, my brethren, that Church has the doctrines of Jesus 
Christ. Buried it may be, under its superstitions, errors, and 
misconceptions ; but dig down deep enough and you uncover 
Christ, even in the Roman Catholic Church, in all his power and 
in all his splendor. That Church has labored and we have entered 
into its labors. 

When I reached Peking, I went over the works that had been Catholics 
built by our matchless Gamewell. (What a splendid name that is | nd 
for a military hero, and what a victorious contest he fought for the in Peking 
cause of Jesus Christ, right there in the heart of pagan China!) 
When I looked over the works our own matchless Gamewell had 
constructed, and saw the evidences of the awful carnage that had 
raged all about them, my heart swelled with admiration for the 
man and for the little garrison that fought the battle out until 
the victory came. Let us remember that the Roman Catholics 
and the Protestants were all there together. They came marching 
up from our compound, Roman Catholic and Protestant Chris- 
tians, side by side. I sometimes think that is a prophecy of a 
time when we shall forget all about St. Peter's and Rome and 
John Wesley and all that, and Roman Catholics and Protestants, 
arm in arm, shall go swinging along on the march to everlasting 
victory. God grant that it may come, and come speedily ! I went 
over to where the Roman Catholics made their own fight, in their 
own Peitang Cathedral, and saw there the evidences of a conflict 
more terrible than that which raged about our own fortifications ; 
saw where the great explosion had swept so many of their chil- 
dren into eternity ; looked all through the ruins of that great 
structure, and my heart was made very tender. I had heard how 
the old Archbishop Favier had stood there alone, inspiring and 
11 



1 62 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A 

Reformation 
Yet to Be 



The Chinese a 
Mighty Race 



leading the little handful that defended that citadel of the faith. 
I asked to see him, and they took me into his room. There he 
was, with his legs swathed in bandages, suffering from rheuma- 
tism. He looked to me like an incarnation, not of the spirit of 
Mars and of battle, but of the spirit of Michael, the archangel. 

Before you, the representatives of the Methodist Church, before 
you the young Methodists, the Methodism of the future, I say 
there is a spirit in the bosom of the great Roman Catholic Church 
sublime and heroic, from the days of St. Francis Xavier down to 
our own; a spirit that has given to the cause of Christ martyrs 
by the hundreds and thousands, and that will yet bring it into line 
with the most advanced and blessed movements of the Gospel. 
As in the past there was a Luther and a Reformation that arose 
in that Church and swept out over the world and again making 
it new, and as in later times out of that Reformation there came 
a Wesley and an Oxford movement sweeping over the world and 
again making it new, so the time is possibly not far in the future 
when out of that Church will come another Luther and another 
Wesley, and the end will draw nigh. I love to think that that 
mighty Church needs only to be touched into life and vitalized 
into active and earnest piety to be such an organization as, joined 
with the organizations of Protestantism, shall assure the conquest 
of the world for the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Finally, this other fact, that down deep beneath the supersti- 
tions and errors of China, down below fetiches and fetich worship, 
and all the monstrous incrustation of errors that has overgrown 
the system of Confucian ethics, there is in China such a sub- 
stratum of moral teaching and faith as cannot be found elsewhere 
on the face of the earth — a foundation already prepared for the 
beautiful superstructure of the Christian religion. Not a stone 
of that foundation, so far as the morality of Confucius is con- 
cerned, needs to be changed ; all we have to do is to put into it 
the life and power of the religion of Jesus Christ, and the very 
stones will cry out in praise and adoration unto our Lord. 

Thus you see what preparation is made for the final victory. 
Can you doubt that the Lord Jesus Christ has come unto all? 
While other nations have filled the world with their glittering 
splendor, and have sunk and been forgotten, why has China been 
preserved ? Is the noblest form of Christianity to be wrought out 
in China ? I adore my own flag, my own people, made up of the 



THE OPEN DOOR IN AFRICA 163 

best nations of the world, but I go down upon my knees in humble 
reverence before the majesty of the mighty Chinese race. The 
noblest people on the face of the earth are standing there man- 
acled, waiting for the power of the Gospel to strike off their fetters 
and let them go free. Yes, the wires are all strung in China, all 
strung; the poles are up, the wires are strung. It only needs 
the dynamo of the Gospel and connection with that great Source 
of spiritual electricity to have the Light of the World flash in 
splendor, from the rivers to the ends of the earth ! 



THE OPEN DOOR IN AFRICA 

Bishop J. C. Hartzell 

Africa is the last continent to be opened to the Gospel, and The Fullness 
her peoples are the last great section of the human family to be e 

reached by the truth as it is in Christ. The fullness of time has 
come, in the providence of God, to this continent and people, as 
certainly as it did in the coming of our Lord, in the supreme 
moment of the world's redemption. And how quickly it has all 
been done ! Only yesterday that vast continent was under a veil 
of mystery. On the northeast corner in the distant past, that 
veil was lifted by the peoples of Asia and there developed the 
civilizations of Egypt. Later, along the Mediterranean Sea, the 
edge of that veil was lifted a little and cities and empires grew 
and passed away. In still later times along both coasts and in the 
far south the edges of the continent were explored ; but until a 
few years ago that vast continent, the oldest of the earth, and 
one destined to have a very large place in the future of the world, 
was hidden in mystery. We know not for how many thousands 
of years her multitudes dwelling in barbaric heathenism had 
been babbling their many tongues. We only know that there 
was mystery and tragedy and uncertainty. Within a very few 
years that veil has been lifted and you and I now look upon the 
map of all Africa, trace her rivers, measure her mountains, 
estimate her wealth, count her peoples, and study their religions. 

On no other continent have so many wonderful things been Crowding of 
done in so brief a time. Only in our time was it possible to over- the Days 
come the physical difficulties of subduing that continent. The 
great Sahara Desert and the Abyssinian Mountains confined the 



164 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Journey of 
Livingstone 



European 
Wars in 
Africa Ended 



Roman empire, the early Christian Church, and Egyptian ambi- 
tions to the lower valleys of the Nile and a little strip along the 
Mediterranean. Many hundreds of thousands of lives were lost 
as the centuries passed in attempts to penetrate the interior 
through the deadly malaria of the coasts. The modern railway 
alone could carry civilization to the heart of Africa. Medical 
science has now begun to grapple successfully with the fevers of 
Africa and other tropical climes. At no other period of modern 
times were the diplomatic relations of Europe such as to have 
permitted the parceling out of a continent and the organization 
of colonial governments over so vast an area, without tre- 
mendous wars. Africa to-day presents an era of nation building 
without a precedent in history, while exploration, commerce, 
diplomacy, science, missionary movements are centering upon 
the African continent in a most marvelous manner. 

It was only in 1841 that the immortal Livingstone began to 
thread his way northward from Cape Town through Bechuana- 
land two thousand miles to the Zambesi, then to St. Paul de 
Loanda, on the West Coast. From there he retraced his steps to 
the Zambesi, discovered Victoria Falls, and pushed eastward 
across the continent to the shores of the Indian Ocean. That jour- 
ney was inspired by God in the heart of that Christian missionary, 
and its story startled and aroused the Christian world. Other 
discoveries followed, and then came the organization of the 
Congo Free State by a congress of nations at Brussels. This 
great event also was providential, for King Leopold had a 
supreme desire to benefit Africa. A little later came the parti- 
tion of practically the whole continent among the chief nations 
of Europe. The close of the South African war marks the end 
of this brief but momentous period in the history of Africa, which 
was begun by the explorations of Livingstone. Pretoria, where 
the terms of peace between the Briton and the Boer were signed, 
will be another historic spot not only as relates to the English 
and Dutch peoples, but to the whole of the African continent. It 
means the end of European wars in Africa, and that from now on 
the dividing lines between the colonial possessions of different 
nations in Africa are practically adjusted, and that the adminis- 
trative and diplomatic forces of England and France and 
Germany and the other nations interested will be concentrated 
upon questions of practical government, the development of the 



THE OPEN DOOR IN AFRICA 1 65 

continent, and the best interests of the multitude of natives. 
The end of this historic period also means that all Africa is now 
open to the forces of Christianity. Very soon there will be a 
continental system of railways with commercial enterprises and 
intercommunication everywhere ; there will be vast agricultural 
and mineral wealth ; growth of centers of power wherever Anglo- 
Saxon civilization will be possible, and the development of 
permanent government among the natives throughout the whole 
continent. 

It is difficult to realize how large an open door God has placed A Vast 
before the Church in Africa. There is room enough on the lower Continent 
end of the continent for the whole of the United States with her 
85,000,000 of people ; Europe, with her many states and hundreds 
of millions, can be placed on one side of Central Africa; China, 
with her 400,000,000, could be accommodated on the other half 
of Central Africa, and there is plenty of room for all India, with 
her 300,000,000, and England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland 
in the lower valleys of the Nile and along the coasts of the Medi- 
terranean ; while there is plenty of room for Porto Rico and the 
Philippines on the islands of Zanzibar and Madagascar and other 
islands on the East and West Coasts. The 12,500,000 square 
miles of territory on the African continent equals that of all other 
countries in which our Church has foreign missions! 

The population of Africa to-day is comparatively small, not 
more than 150,000,000. This means an average of not more Room to 
than twelve people to the square mile. This, too, would seem to s P are 
be a providential fact. Instead of a continent crowded with 
peoples crushed under the weight of dying civilizations and false 
religions, intrenched in philosophies and customs hoary with 
age, Africa presents a section of the earth largely yet to be 
occupied, and her native peoples ready for the molding influences 
of the Gospel. 

It is important not only to understand the number of people 
in Africa, but their relation to each other. Of the 150,000,000, 
not more, perhaps, than 1,200,000 are white people, and among 
these are counted at least 300,000 of the mixed Caucasian peoples 
along the Mediterranean. In South Africa, where alone there 
can be a large center of Anglo-Saxon civilization, there are not 
more than 800,000 white people ; while in the great heart of the 
continent, with its more than 125,000,000 black natives, there are 



1 66 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Small White 
Population 



Justice and 
Progress 



Sons of Ham 

and of Japheth 



hardly 100,000 white people. Along the eastern coast there are 
possibly 300,000 people from India, and the number is rapidly 
increasing. It would seem that eastern Africa is to be to the 
overflowing populations of India what America has been and is 
to the people of Europe. These figures show how comparatively 
small is the white population of the whole continent. Now add to 
this the momentous fact that in the providence of God the govern- 
ing forces of all Africa are in the hands of white men, and 
we are face to face with the vast significance of the open door 
in Africa to America and the Methodist Episcopal Church because 
of their greatness and their moral responsibility in the redemp- 
tion of the world. In a few years the whole Dark Continent has 
become a part of "the white man's burden.'' For centuries — we 
know not how many — the black races of Africa have lived on in 
the midst of barbaric heathenism without developing permanent 
or effective civilization, beyond some centers of fairly well or- 
ganized social order. The failure of the black races to utilize the 
natural resources of the African continent for the good of 
humanity has been manifested. Whether in the future there will 
be any great black nationalities we do not know. What is now 
evident is that when the civilized world needed Africa for her 
overflowing populations and expanding commerce it became 
necessary for governments controlled by white men to take pos- 
session of the continent. On man's side the motives have not 
always been good, but in all ages God's overruling providences 
have been and still are manifest. The black races of Africa, and, 
through them, of the world, are to have their chance in the 
twentieth century under the direction and government of the 
sons of Japheth. 

Civilizations are never indigenous, and the open door in Africa 
means that the civilization of the white races is to be established 
in all that continent, and the special problem of the great nations 
having this work in hand, led by Great Britain, whose flag is the 
missionary flag of the world, is to see to it that in doing this 
great work there is equal justice for all, black and white, and the 
largest opportunity for individual and racial progress. 

While the responsibility of redeeming Africa is placed upon 
the white man, it is also evident that upon that continent the 
black races of the world are to have their chief centers and to 
work out on the largest scale their future destinies. It has 



THE OPEN DOOR IN AFRICA 1 67 

already been proved that wherever there have been good govern- 
ments in Africa the native peoples increase rapidly in numbers. 
In Cape Colony, for example, with 400,000 white people, there 
are more than 2,000,000 blacks. In Natal Colony, with only 
50,000 whites, there are more than 50,000 Indians and 600,000 
blacks. South of the Zambesi River, with only 800,000 white 
people, there are more than 8,000,000 blacks ; while as I have 
said already, the whole vast continent of the north is practically 
one great mass of black humanity. The twentieth century will 
probably see five or six hundred millions of black people on the 
African continent, and with the limited territory where white 
civilization is possible, the number of white people will probably 
be but little beyond the same proportion as now. 

Another important fact touching the open door in Africa is 
that the responsibility of the sons of Japheth for the government " The White 
of the continent carries with it the momentous work of providing JJJJ n » 
for the industrial, intellectual, and moral future of its native 
races. Compared with this vast work, providentially imposed as 
a part of "the white man's burden" upon the nations now devel- 
oping colonial governments in Africa, the negro problem in 
America is a national incident of small import. In America nine 
tenths of the negro population is in a single section; while in 
South Africa, where alone there is a large white population, there 
are eight times as many blacks as whites, and in the whole 
continent there are about one hundred and fifty black people to 
each white person. 

To-day the one overshadowing question in Africa is the native 
problem. It presents itself in acute forms on every hand. In The Native 
government the questions are, To what extent can the native be Pr0 lem 
recognized as the citizen, and how soon, and, how best can the 
authority of law be extended and barbarism be displaced by 
civilization, so that there will be a minimum of hardship to the 
subject races? In every form of industry the problem is to teach 
the native races the dignity and necessity of labor as a means to 
higher social and intellectual conditions. No one thing has im- 
pressed me more during conversations with many prominent and 
leading men representing England, Germany, France, and other 
nations who are face to face with these problems in Africa than 
the manifest seriousness with which these native questions are 
approached. 



i68 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Home of the 
Sons of Ham 



The 

Blessing of 
English Rule 



The great mass of the black races are to have their home on 
the African continent, as certainly as the sons of Shem chiefly 
occupy Asia and the sons of Japheth Europe and America. The 
right treatment of the native African must therefore be a test 
of the character and efficiency of any government developing 
power on that continent. Herein was a radical defect in the 
constitution of the late South African Republic. Paul Krueger 
and his associates made it a part of the fundamental law of their 
little republic that there could be no equality between the whites 
and the natives in Church or State. During a conversation in 
1897 with Mr. Krueger he defended to me the attitude of his 
people toward the negro. On the other hand, Great Britain, Ger- 
many, and France, especially the first named government, treats 
the native as a man amenable to law and encourages and 
cooperates in the work of his improvement in morals, industry, 
and social conditions. A few years ago the Kaiser annulled the 
decision of a court-martial which proposed a moderate punish- 
ment for a German military officer of high rank in Africa. The 
crime was the hanging of a native girl for some trivial offense, 
and by order of the Kaiser he was dismissed from the army and 
public service in disgrace. England extends the right of suffrage 
to natives on the same basis as to the whites, and makes provision 
for their education. In the late Transvaal Republic the native 
had no standing before the law, could not own land or go into 
business on his own account, and was flogged or imprisoned if 
found without his badge showing he had paid his annual license. 

Every friend of the native African ought to thank God that 
under the leading governments now dominating Africa, and 
especially under English rule, which is to be the greatest factor 
in the affairs of that continent, the black man is to have a fair 
chance. It has been said that in the eighteenth century the white 
man stole Africans from Africa, and that he is now engaged in 
stealing Africa from the Africans. The truth of the first state- 
ment cannot be questioned, and the horrors of the African slave 
trade, so long "the open sore of the world," must ever stand as 
the crime of crimes on the part of Christian nations against the 
black races. In one sense it is true that the white man is now 
stealing Africa from the African, but in a much higher sense. 
In God's providence, the white man in Africa is to open the way 
for the greatest possible good for the native multitudes of to-day 



THE OPEN DOOR IN AFRICA 169 

and the multiplying millions of the future. Tribal wars which 
periodically devastated sections of the continent are now ended. 
It is said that a single great chief in South Africa, at the begin- 
ning of the last century, was the cause of the death of a million 
natives by war and consequent famine. There is to be permanent 
and well-ordered government; industry and home life will be 
encouraged, the right of property protected, and the way opened 
for the Christian school and church. God will see to it that the 
nations which have taken the responsibility of Africa from the 
Africans will do justice or lose their power and place on that 
continent, and their prestige before the world. 

If Africa is to be for the African in this wide and manifestly American 
providential sense it is easily seen that the relations and respon- ?i?£ ence in 
sibilities of the United States to the open door in that continent 
are direct and of imperative import. It is not a question of 
territorial possessions. The nearest approach to this is the little 
black republic of Liberia, on the West Coast, made up chiefly of 
American negroes and their descendants, and in this case it is 
only a matter of moral influence. President McKinley, with 
many others, held that the United States had a moral obligation 
to that little commonwealth which should be recognized, and 
practical sympathy and cooperation should be given when needed. 

As to commerce between the United States and Africa, it will 
grow to marvelous proportions, and the great republic will always 
be an umpire in influence, if not in actual word, between the 
nations governing Africa. But the open door in Africa means 
far more to the United States than the possession of territory 
or moral power with other nationalities. Within our own border 
are nearly ten million black people, the most moral, industrious 
group of negroes on the earth. The good which this mass of 
black humanity inherits as the result of three hundred years of 
tutelage in slavery and freedom cannot be made an apology for 
the African slave trade, but only demonstrates again, as has been 
done many times in history, that God is saving this world in spite 
of men's wickedness. 

This Africa in America has a peculiarly providential relation American 
to Africa beyond the seas, and American negro leadership in Leadership 
Africa is one of the divine calls of the hour. Here is a very im- 
portant part of the answer to the splendid results achieved since 
the war in the education of black men and women in our Southern 



170 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A Freedman's 

Heart 

Utterance 



A Mother's 
Yearning 



States. But just as the white man and governments are re- 
sponsible for the well-being of the black races in Africa, so the 
white man of America must go hand in hand with his brother 
black man at home in plans and faith and sacrifice for the re- 
demption of Africa beyond the seas. 

Years ago, just after the civil war, I spoke to an immense 
audience of freedmen in Galveston, Texas, and sought to inspire 
them with hopefulness as to their future and spoke of the mission 
of the great republic and of the Christian Church to give them 
and their children the Christian school, the church, and a fair 
chance in the race of life. After having taken my seat a tall 
black man arose in the rear part of the audience and slowly made 
his way through the crowd toward the front. An influence of 
profound expectancy pervaded the audience, and as the old man 
made his way there was perfect quiet. I learned afterward that 
he had been stolen from Africa when a boy and brought to 
America in one of the sailing slavers which occasionally found 
their way to the Gulf coast long after the general abolition of the 
slave trade. At last he reached the platform, and after hesitating 
a moment he stepped upon it and stood before me trembling with 
emotion. At last, as if not knowing what else to do, he fell on 
his knees before me and extending his arms looked into my face, 
while the tears flowed down his cheeks. He said, "O, where did 
you come from? I shall never forget you as long as I live, and 
every day the sun rises I shall pray for you while God gives me 
breath." His head fell into my lap, and he sobbed like a child. 
The blessed heart experiences and inspiration which came to my 
life during the twenty-six years I was permitted to give to God's 
poor in the Southern States I can never sufficiently thank God 
for. Now I find myself among a vastly greater black multitude 
on the continent of Africa, commissioned by the Church to take 
to them the same Gospel which I preached to the freedmen and 
their successors in the South, and I meet the same heart appeals 
and cries for the truth of God. One day in 1897, during my first 
episcopal tour in Angola, as the hammock carriers bore me along 
the narrow path at the head of my caravan, I heard the cry of a 
woman. At my request the carrier stopped, and getting out of 
my hammock I saw in a little opening of the grass beside the 
path a native woman with her arms outstretched toward the 
heavens, crying as if her heart would break. Through an inter- 



THE OPEN DOOR IN AFRICA 171 

preter I asked what was the matter, and she told me this story : 
"My baby died last night. I don't know where it is, and I am 
afraid I shall never find it again." Ashes had been thrown upon 
her head and had fallen down upon her person, for among these 
natives there are some Jewish customs — among the rest, sack- 
cloth or ashes in time of sorrow. I told her about Jesus, who 
was born a baby and grew to be a man and who was God on 
earth, and who died to save her and her baby, and that her child 
was with him now, and that, if she would love Jesus and serve 
him, after a while she would go to her baby and never lose it 
again. She looked at me at first with amazement and fear, but 
seeing the kind expression of my face she fell upon her face 
before me and clasped my feet in her arms and wept as if her 
heart would break. I bade her arise. She had been selling some 
bananas and other native fruits to passers-by that she might make 
a few pennies to pay the funeral expenses of her baby. I bought 
all that she had, paying several times the value, and then she 
said, "I must go quickly and tell my people of the white man 
from afar and what he has said about Jesus and about my finding 
my baby again." We were journeying along the hillside, and in 
the distance on the plains I could see several native towns, and 
as the woman made her way I praised God that I was permitted 
to preach the Gospel to her and to give her a word of comfort in 
the hour of her heart sorrow. 

A gentleman said a day or two ago in my hearing : "Hartzell A Large 
ought to be an expert on the negro. He used to come to us in Burden 
the North and plead for the freedman of the South, and now he 
comes and speaks with the same enthusiasm of the greater masses 
in Africa." I do not know whether that was intended as a com- 
pliment or not, and neither do I care, but after I heard the remark 
my thoughts ran back through the years I have given to our 
Southern land and there came rushing over me the pathos, the 
sympathy, and the ambitions and plans of those years during 
which it was my lot to help in laying the foundations of civil and 
religious institutions in the Southern States after the dreadful 
war. Whatever word I may have spoken or influence exerted in 
bringing to the heart of the Church and nation the needs of those 
people and their necessities I thank God for. To-day a larger 
burden rests upon me, and I somehow feel that my work in the 
South, especially on editorial and educational lines, was the 



I?2 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Answer 
of the Church 



A Great 
Continent 
Scarcely 
Touched 



The Cost in 
Lives 



school in which I was being prepared for my work in greater 
Africa. 

I come now to the most important part of my address. What 
is to be the answer of the Christian Church to this wide-open 
door in Africa? Opportunities to the Christian Church mean 
responsibilities which cannot be ignored without losing the bless- 
ing of God. The only thing that seems to lag in that vast field 
is the Christian Church. No matter how many millions of dollars 
are needed to build a railroad, open and equip a mine, organize a 
new colony, build docks or dredge harbors, float a score of steam- 
ships or explore new regions, the word has only to be spoken in 
London or Paris or Berlin or Hamburg or New York, and they 
are forthcoming. 

Something is being done by the Church in Africa. There are 
forty missionary societies at work, and at some centers, consider- 
ing the difficulties, good work has been accomplished among the 
natives. It must also be remembered that in the great European 
centers, like Cape Town and Johannesburg, there are churches 
and schools and philanthropic efforts among the white people. 
But the great continent has scarcely been touched by the Christian 
Church. In North Africa it has been estimated there is only one 
Protestant missionary to a hundred and twenty-five thousand 
Mohammedans; in Sahara, one Protestant missionary to two 
million five hundred thousand Mohammedans and pagans; in 
Sudan, one Protestant missionary to forty-five million Moham- 
medans and pagans; in West Africa, one Protestant missionary 
to thirty thousand pagans ; in Central Africa, eighty thousand 
pagans to one missionary; and in South Africa, one mission- 
ary to fourteen thousand pagans. Think of it, in the great heart 
of the continent one lone Protestant missionary to forty-five 
millions of pagans and Mohammedans ! The Christian Church 
as a whole has not yet taken Africa seriously to heart. No land 
has had more heroic men and women. Six hundred have laid 
down their lives for the exploration of the continent, and the price 
already paid for Africa, in the lives of missionaries, has been 
great; but still the deaths of missionaries in Africa are only a 
small per cent of the number of deaths among the tens of thou- 
sands who flock to that continent to make money, study science, 
or for fame or wealth in government or commerce. The chief 
work of Methodism in Africa up to date has been that of the 



THE OPEN DOOR IN AFRICA 173 

Wesleyan Church in South Africa and on the West Coast. 
The work of the Methodist Episcopal Church has been in no way 
commensurate with her wealth in her workers and money and her 
responsibilities before God. 

Six years ago last May the Church, through the General Con- A Plea for 
ference, sent me to Africa. At first the work was one of explora- sympathy 1 
tion and study, as related to the scattered work we had and the 
centers where our work should be made permanent. My last 
tour, just completed, has been in many respects the most 
thorough, having visited every center on both coasts and organ- 
ized two Mission Conferences, one in the east and one in the west, 
to include all of the work outside of the old Liberia Conference. 
Now we have our centers fixed, and I can speak from definite 
knowledge; and through this great Convention my plea to the 
Church is that Africa and its redemption be taken seriously to 
heart. I have had and am having plenty of sympathy, but I must 
have something more. Our missionary workers in Africa have 
the sympathy of many thousands, but they must have something 
more. They must have buildings and church and school equip- 
ments, their personal necessities must be met. and we must have 
the means to send out reinforcements not only to strengthen the 
work we have, but to hearken to some of the pitiful calls which 
come to us from the regions beyond. 

Let us begin with Liberia, that little black republic born out Liberia 
of philanthropic plans of good Americans a hundred years ago. 
Their motives were different. Some thought to benefit slavery 
by the removal of free negroes from the South, and others had 
different views, but all felt that in the end Liberia would be a 
center where American negroes could better their condition and 
inaugurate a movement toward the evangelization of the conti- 
nent. All that was anticipated has not been realized, but the little 
nation lives and is recognized and protected by the great nations 
of the world. Its territory extends three hundred and fifty miles 
along the coast and two hundred and fifty miles into the interior, 
and is one of the richest sections of the West Coast. A new 
era seems to have dawned commercially upon the republic. A 
charter has been granted to a large English company to explore 
and develop its agricultural and mineral wealth and increase its 
general commerce. It was in Liberia that our first foreign mis- 
sion was established in 1833, when Melville B. Cox so quickly 



i?4 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



An 

Encouraging 

Outlook 



Self-support 



and joyfully laid down his life, having asked that on his tomb- 
stone should be written, "Though a thousand fall, let not Africa 
be given up." The history of our Liberia Mission is a checkered 
one of mingled victory and defeat, and some day must be written 
by a wise historian. The best news that I have to give you from 
Liberia is that a new spirit of helpfulness and aggressiveness is 
taking possession of that Conference. We have about one hun- 
dred workers, including ministers and laymen, who are appointed 
each year to districts, schools, churches, and missions. I held the 
last Conference at Grand Bassa a few months ago, in a new 
brick church that cost four thousand dollars and which was built 
by the people themselves except what I gave them for the win- 
dows and roof. When the trustees presented the church to me 
for dedication there was a debt of six hundred dollars due the 
Hon. J. C. Somerville, vice president of the republic and one of 
the trustees. He handed me a receipt in full, so there was no 
debt. It was a joyful day to us, and I scarcely ever have attended 
a more enthusiastic Conference session. The same town and 
neighborhood has subscribed two thousand dollars toward a high 
school building. In Monrovia, the capital, we have our strongest 
church. It. is also the best one in the republic. It is self-support- 
ing, and besides giving two thousand dollars toward the enlarge- 
ment of our college building it is building a two-thousand-dollar 
parsonage. Other churches among the Americo-Liberians are 
becoming self-supporting, and my word to them is that my first 
mission in Liberia is to teach them how to help themselves. We 
have our College of West Africa located at the capital, and 
twenty-nine primary schools in different parts of the republic. 
We have our printing press and outfit, for which I have raised 
the money and which is worth six thousand dollars. Here we 
print The New Africa, a thirty-two-page monthly, Sunday school 
literature and tracts and songs in several native languages. A 
very important part of our Liberia work is included in the purely 
native stations. At one Conference I asked a native teacher to 
rise and sing "Come to Jesus," and then I asked another who 
taught in a different language to rise and sing the same, and so 
on until six different teachers working among many different 
tribes and using as many different dialects had sung "Come to 
Jesus." Then I asked the whole Conference and all others who 
could speak English to sing the same blessed words. Then at 



THE OPEN DOOR IN AFRICA 175 

my request everybody arose together and all sang "Come to 
Jesus," each using his own language. That mingling of races 
and languages in Christian song was to me a prophecy of the 
time when all races and all tongues in that vast continent shall 
come to Jesus with joyful hallelujahs ! 

This work in Liberia is in great need. Scarcely anything has property and 
been done for many years in building, and many of our mission Workers 
stations are unfit for habitation, and yet our brave workers patch 
up the roofs and prop up the sides and get through the rainy 
season as best they can. We are short of workers for the stations 
we have, and have been compelled to abandon many of them and 
center at the principal ones. And then what of the vast regions 
beyond? I sent one missionary a journey seven days into the 
interior, and the stories he brought of healthful valleys and plains 
and of fine types of negroes who had never seen a white man 
stirred my soul. But what could I do ? That missionary was com- 
pelled to come home, and I have not sufficient force to man even 
the station from which he started. Among the natives he found 
those who were making brass bells and rings and chains and who 
were workers in iron and had wealth in ivory and cattle, but they 
knew not the value of money, and the only way to trade with them 
was by exchange in goods. O, how long must the work in 
Liberia be practically confined to the most unhealthy coast region 
and the vast open doors beyond be neglected ? If I had five thou- 
sand dollars to establish an industrial mission a hundred miles 
from the coast it would soon support itself. 

Down the coast past the mouth of the great Congo River we Angola 
reach St. Paul de Loanda, the oldest city on the West Coast, with 
five thousand Portuguese and thirty-five thousand natives. The 
view from the harbor is beautiful. The city is divided into two 
portions, a part lying along the beach and the greater portion 
extending upon a high plateau in the rear. In plain view is the 
National Observatory, the Ocean Cable Station, a great hospital, 
the colonial and city buildings, the governor's residence, and the 
parks and shady avenues. On one of the most beautiful points 
of the high ground stand our two mission buildings, surrounded 
by the mission grounds. One of these was built by Bishop Taylor 
and affords good room for church and Sunday school services in 
the basement and provides for a school of one hundred and fifty 
in the upper story. The other building I have recently purchased 



176 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A Line of 

Mission 

Stations 



Madeira 
Islands 



at an expense of five thousand dollars. The cost to build it was 
over twelve thousand dollars. This added a home for our mis- 
sionaries and a fine place for our girls' dormitory. This great 
center has been practically unoccupied for ten years for lack of 
workers and money, but I have taken the responsibility of buying 
the property and opening the work. It had to be done. It is the 
key to our West Central Africa Mission Conference, where we 
have a territory of nearly four hundred thousand square miles 
among a choice class of natives. Extending out three hundred 
miles to Malange, we have our other four central stations, and 
besides these we have smaller stations under the care of native 
preachers. This work had been thoroughly organized. We have 
a well-equipped mission press at Quiongua, and are publishing 
the Scriptures, tracts, a four-page paper, and will soon publish 
a series of text-books for our native schools. We have two in- 
dustrial schools which are self-supporting and which aid largely 
in building. One school built a good native church and made 
the furniture, and is now building a schoolhouse at Quiongua. 
The other school is helping to build at Quessua. The Kimbundu 
language of these people is one of the best in Africa. This Con- 
ference needs at least six new workers at once to maintain it with 
efficiency as it is, and there is need of a few thousand dollars to 
be put into inexpensive buildings at several points. And then 
what of the regions beyond? Gradually a highway is being 
opened up for commerce in a vast section where there are no 
missionaries, and where the voice of God has been calling for 
thousands of years to the Christian Church. When can I have a 
single man with intellectual and moral grip sufficient to enter that 
open door? 

And then take the Madeira Islands, that beautiful spot where 
God has opened up the work to us so marvelously among the 
Portuguese. The city of Funchal and its suburbs have sixty thou- 
sand people, and on a single island there are as many more. Over 
them has been the rule of Roman Catholic Jesuitism for four 
hundred years. While no one shall go beyond me in the apprecia- 
tion of the good the Roman Catholic Church is doing, still it must 
be said that Roman Catholic Jesuitism is an organized conspiracy 
against the civil and religious liberty of the world. Sixty years 
ago a Scotch Presbyterian physician did a remarkable work 
among these Portuguese Roman Catholics. Besides his work as a 



THE OPEN DOOR IN AFRICA 1 77 

physician, he had schools and taught the people to read the Bible 
in their own tongue. Twelve or fifteen hundred became Protes- 
tants in the course of a few years, and insisted en reading the Bible 
themselves and worshiping God according to the dictates of their 
own consciences. A great persecution arose, and the day was 
fixed when Dr. Kalley, the missionary, and all his followers were 
to be exterminated. On that very day, while the signal bell was 
being sounded in the tower of the cathedral, God sent an English 
ship into the harbor, and the leader, disguised in clothing as a 
sick woman, was carried in a hammock to the beach and ship by 
men who would have murdered him had they known who he was. 
All the Protestants, it was thought, were driven from the island. 
But a little precious seed remained, and only a short distance 
from where Dr. Kalley had his wonderful work in the mountains 
we have our Mount Faith Mission, with nearly fifty men and Mount Faith 
women recently converted and who testify to God's love, and as lssl0n 
many more youth in our Sunday and day schools. Down in the 
city, opposite a beautiful park, we have our church house. The 
Roman Catholic owner told me that he would rent it to us because 
he believed in religious toleration for all. In the basement we 
have our Sailors' Rest, and I have secured the cooperation of the 
sailors' societies in London and New York to help in that work- 
We have regular Portuguese services, and have published a hand- 
book of Methodist Episcopal doctrines and hymns in Portuguese. 
We have here a place where our sick missionaries can go and 
recuperate, and this is my home as far as I can have an episcopal 
residence. Nearly two thousand ships of various kinds anchor 
in that harbor every year in their passing from Europe to South 
America and Africa. In four years the results of this work have 
been most encouraging, and near by are other islands of large 
populations where Protestantism has open doors. I have had only 
five hundred dollars of mission money each year for this work. 
The remainder of the annual expense of three thousand dollars 
and over to maintain five missionaries, build and equip our build- 
ings at Mount Faith, has been raised among friends. 

On the southeast coast of the continent we have two centers, six Native 
One is at Inhambane, where five years ago we had one missionary, stations at 
one native station, and a few native members. Now we have six 
native stations with hundreds of members and calls from many 
directions for workers in a population of several million. Here 
12 



i 7 8 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Beira 



Bhodesia 



~arge 

roperty 
foldings 



we have another press and outfit and are printing a series of 
text-books for the native schools, religious tracts, and a large 
amount of work is being done in the translation of the Scriptures. 
We must have at least four new missionaries for this center. Our 
schools for boys and girls must have buildings. At no other point 
of our work in Africa can so much be done for the same amount 
of money. 

Two hundred and fifty miles up the coast is Beira, the east 
ocean port for all Rhodesia. It is already a city of several thou- 
sand people. Here are European whites, Indians, Chinese, and 
great numbers of natives. For three years I have hoped that the 
way would be open to send a man to this point. We must occupy 
it. It is the ocean key to all our work in East Africa, but I have 
not had the money, although the work could be made self-sup- 
porting after the first or second year. Two hundred miles by 
rail brings us to the mountainous table-lands of eastern Rhodesia, 
with Umtali for the first center of European population, in the 
midst of a vast gold-bearing and agricultural section. In October 
of 1897 I rode into this town, drenched with rain and covered 
with mud, and as I looked upon its beautiful situation and sur- 
roundings I said, "Here is to be the chief center of American 
Methodist missions in East Africa." I cannot go into details, 
but as the result of correspondence and many interviews with 
representatives of the British South Africa Company in Rhodesia 
and England and many a wearying journey relating to property 
titles and other necessary matters, and also representation to the 
Church at* home, securing money and workers, I was permitted, 
with my heart overflowing with gratitude to God, November 16, 
1901, to organize the East Central Africa Mission Conference at 
Umtali. It was a great event for that section of the continent. 
It was the founding of a new spiritual empire, another section of 
our world-wide Methodism. There were present eighteen picked 
white men and women from America. The acquisition of prop- 
erty had been remarkable. The chief single gift was thirteen 
thousand acres of land with buildings worth seventy thousand 
dollars in a beautiful valley ten miles from the town and rail- 
road, where we are developing a great industrial native station, 
and where already good progress has been made in the mastery 
of languages, in the development of a farm and mechanical shops, 
and gathering herds of stock, opening schools, and doing evan- 



THE OPEN DOOR IN AFRICA 179 

gelical work among the neighboring native towns. In the village 
of Umtali our native work is having remarkable progress. We 
already have one self-supporting church where the people support 
their preacher and teacher, and lands have been secured in several 
towns in the vicinity where, in a few months, we will have other 
churches filled with interested and anxious worshipers. The 
present force on the field can organize these churches, but I must 
have one or two more good missionaries to take charge of this 
enlarging work and to teach native helpers and prepare them as 
quickly as possible for permanent service. In the Umtali native 
church over sixty have been converted within the past six months. 

In this center we have our first development among the Euro- Work among 
pean and African white people of the continent. These are made tne W 1 "* 68 
up of people connected with railroads, government officials, and 
those engaged in commerce, mining, and agriculture. Most of 
these have emigrated from Europe and other countries, but a 
good percentage are Africanders, born and reared in Cape Colony 
or other sections of Africa. Within a few miles are gold-mining 
centers, so that altogether in that section there are now, perhaps, 
fifteen hundred white people, and their number will increase 
rapidly now that the war is over, and great plans are being in- 
augurated for the development of South Africa. 

Among these people we have a self-supporting academy. We Umtali 
secured a property that cost thirty-one thousand dollars for half Academ y 
that sum. The government gave five thousand dollars and loaned 
us the balance at five per cent interest until we could raise it. We 
have a hundred pupils and five departments, Kindergarten, Music, 
Primary, Intermediate, and High School. We have four teach- 
ers. The government also pays one half the salaries of the 
teachers and one half the expenses of equipping the schools. The 
tuition pays the other half, so that we have this splendid property 
and this flourishing school without the use of a dollar of mission- 
ary money. Here, as the population increases, will be our future 
college and Christian training school. We have also organized 
the St. Andrew's Methodist Episcopal Church, our first for st. Andrew's 
European and African white people on the continent. The corner JL et J°^ lst 
stone of a ten-thousand-dollar church has been laid. The Masonic 
fraternity, with a large company of other citizens, participated in 
the ceremonies. Seventy-five hundred dollars of the expense will 
be provided for on the ground, and I have assumed the balance 



i8o 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A Forward 
Look 



Episcopal 
Touring of 
the Continent 



of twenty-five hundred dollars. On reaching the East Coast in 
a few months I will dedicate this church, together with three or 
four native churches. This new Conference includes all our 
work on the East Coast, and is certainly a phenomenal beginning 
in so brief a time, where five years ago we had nothing but the 
little start at Inhambane. Our property, not counting the thirteen 
thousand acres of land, the value of which is sure to be great in 
the near future, is worth over one hundred thousand dollars. 
Where has there been a more providential or remarkable develop- 
ment in a single mission field in our time? 

And now stand with me for a moment on the summit of a 
mountain five thousand feet above the sea in the midst of our 
large industrial mission estate, and contemplate the open doors 
north, south, east, and west where there are great centers of 
black populations as yet untouched with the Gospel of Christ. 
Concessions of land are offered, the native chiefs are calling for 
"book religion," and the governments are friendly. It is the op- 
portune moment. Especially as I look northward, and know 
that as the result of consultations With government officials, all 
of whom are friendly to Christian missions, a large concession 
of land can be secured near the very heart of the continent, near 
by or through which will pass the railway which, in a few years, 
will connect with the road from Cairo at Khartoum, O, how my 
heart longs to secure that great central location! I know that 
my years in Africa will be too few to develop it, but it will remain 
as a heritage of faith and possibilities to my successor and his 
associates ! 

Six years ago I started to Africa scarcely knowing whither I 
went. The first tour of exploration and study required over 
thirty-five thousand miles of travel, some of it under most difficult 
conditions as to climate, sickness, and modes of transportation. 
Subsequent tours have enabled me to organize the work, to un- 
derstand its needs, to realize the heroism of our missionaries on 
the field, and to know how great the need for large reinforce- 
ments. More than this, the map of the continent of Africa, with 
its systems of rivers and lakes, its mountains, its plateaus, its 
developing cities, its great commercial enterprises, its mining 
and agricultural possibilities, its steamship lines belting its coasts 
over and over again, its governments facing vast responsibilities, 
and its multiplying millions of natives with the infinite pathos 



THE OPEN DOOR IN SOUTHERN ASIA l8l 

of their moral condition — all this has been burned into my very 
soul, and if I could have a thousand tongues and each of them 
could be inspired with the faith of the prophets of old, all should 
be dedicated to pleading for that continent. O Africa, for thee I 
pray, for thee I plead, and, if need be, for thee I die ! 



THE OPEN DOOR IN SOUTHERN ASIA 

Bishop J. M. Thoburn 

Southern Asia, when we use the term geographically, in- What 
eludes all that part of Asia south of the Himalaya Mountains. It Jjj^™ Asia 
also includes all those countries that border upon the Indian 
Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, and I might include the Chinese 
Sea. I mean all those countries north of the equator bordering 
upon those bodies of water. It includes about one half of Arabia. 
In popular usage it includes southern Persia ; but we do not add 
to it any of that part of Asia that borders upon the Pacific Ocean. 
When we use the term according to our usage in the Missionary 
Society we take in nearly all of the territory which I have desig- 
nated. We once had a Methodist society with a local preacher in 
Arabia, at the port of Aden ; but as Aden, with all the coasts of 
the Persian Gulf up to its head, is now recognized as under the 
Indian government, that is included in our territory. Then all of 
India proper is in our field, including what we used to call in our 
geographies Beluchistan, nearly all of which is practically part 
of the British Indian empire. It includes Burma, it includes 
Siam, it includes the Malay Peninsula, all the great Malaysian 
Islands, and, as you heard to-day, the Philippines. 

In this great territory we have an immense population, aggre- i n aia a 
gating something over three hundred and fifty million of people. J 01 ?® 1, of 
Next to China it stands first among the great peoples of this 
world. We have witnessed a very wide extension of our mission 
field. It commenced at a very early period in our Methodist his- 
tory, and has advanced somewhat rapidly since. It now includes 
what might be called, from the religious point of view, a key 
position, so far as the rest of Asia is concerned. India has been 
to an important degree a mother of religions. A missionary peo- 
ple live there. She has borrowed very little from her neighbors, 
and she has given a great deal to them. The early Brahman 



l82 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Why Go So 
Far Afield 



Work in 

Twenty-eight 

Languages 



leaders were missionaries, and Brahmanism, at least in its early 
days, was a missionary religion. It has ceased to be such now. 
And then the more corrupt bodies that now bear the name of 
Hinduism, they also were a missionary people in early days, and 
the ruins of their temples are found in the Malaysian Islands to- 
day. Next the Buddhists arose, and India, through her Buddhist 
missionaries, gave a religion to China and Japan, but never bor- 
rowed anything from those countries. Her Buddhist notions have 
penetrated not only into Persia and western Asia, but to a remark- 
able extent, I think, in some parts of these United States. India 
promises, as you might have gathered from what Bishop Hartzell 
said, to furnish an important missionary agency in the evangeli- 
zation of Africa at a future day, for some of our Christians are 
moving over there now, and we have had a local preacher in the 
town of Zanzibar for a good many years. 

Some one will be prepared to ask why we have gone afield so 
far. "You have not," they will say, "overtaken the country, have 
you, that you first tried to occupy ?" Well, that seems strange, I 
confess, but it was not according to human designing. I have 
often stated in this country that in 1859, when I was going with 
Dr. Butler, then superintendent of our Mission, from Calcutta to 
Lucknow, he explained to me one day that it was a great ad- 
vantage, for which I should be thankful, that our Mission was 
conducted among a people who spoke only one language. Our 
Presbyterian brethren, on the other side of the Ganges, he said, 
must learn three languages, but our compact field, with its seven- 
teen millions, was inhabited by those who spoke Hindustani ex- 
clusively. 

Yet I stand here to-night as one who superintends, in part, 
missionary work among people speaking twenty-eight different 
tongues in southern Asia. I thought it very striking when Dr. 
Leonard remarked the other day, "We have already missionary 
work conducted in fourteen different languages within these 
United States." We just exactly double that number, and we 
are not done with it, for I shall probably live to see the day when 
our twenty-eight languages will be fifty, as the work expands. 
"Why did you let the work expand? You confess that you can- 
not overtake it." We could not help its expansion. God has a 
hand in all these matters. But there is one thing I cannot make 
the people at home understand, which is that much of this 



THE OPEN DOOR IN SOUTHERN ASIA 183 

expansion was in the teeth of our protest. In 1882 there came a 
bishop from the home land, and a senior missionary secretary, 
Bishop Foster, and Dr. Reid, and I remember how in the city of 
Calcutta they belabored us in the South India Conference, which 
then included nearly the whole of India, because we would not 
agree to a plan which would extend our responsibility as mission- 
ary workers over the entire empire. I stood up there one day 
and was strangely moved; I spoke with tears. I said, "If we 
assume the responsibility you are urging upon us, it will involve 
an annual expenditure of about three hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars." They received that statement with expressions of in- 
credulity. I knew pretty well what I meant. Now see what has 
happened. We are occupying a field to-day which, according to Extent of the 
the ordinary appropriations of any modern missionary society, ie 
would require just about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars 
a year. And we have never had the half of it — hardly, indeed, 
the tenth of it — for that field. But there is the responsibility. 
But it was not according to our plan. Those good men did not 
believe that it would ever reach such a sum, but there is One who 
guides in all these matters, and we follow where God leads. He 
gives us, I think, still sometimes a glimpse of a star from heaven 
that we can follow to the exact point where it shines down, not 
upon the Babe of Bethlehem, but upon the work which that now 
glorified One directs from his eternal throne. We are guided 
still by the Spirit and the providence of God. 

You ask me again, How? Well, it comes from the work itself. Providential 
Take one illustration. On the Upper Ganges we worked on the 
eastern side of the river for some years. Every now and then 
some man would be converted who had a relative on the other 
side of the river, and he would come over and learn something 
about the new teaching, and then ask that some one would go 
there. Pretty soon we had a call from the other side of the river 
that seemed to be providential. I remember one tour that Bishop 
Parker and I made on that side of the river, taking with us three 
volunteer preachers to do pioneer work. We just dropped them 
at a railroad station, and said, "You meet us eight days hence at 
Muzaffarnagar ; meet us then and tell us what you may have 
found." We came to these men, and they said, "We have found 
people who have Christian relatives on the other side of the river, 
all through the country. We have preached the word and have 



184 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

baptized a few converts." I sent to the nearest magistrate and 
asked for a copy of the last Indian census. I turned it over and 
found that between the Upper Ganges and the Upper Indus 
Rivers there were living one million one hundred thousand of 
these people, and their religious ideas came nearer to the standard 
of Christianity than those of any other people we had ever found. 
They believed in future rewards and punishments, and, of course, 
in a future existence ; in the separation of the good from the bad, 
and in one Supreme Being. Now, what are we to do in such a 
case? There was only one thing we could do. We planted our 
banner, and largely from the initial movement begun at that 
time the Northwest India Conference has grown up and has 
become a powerful body. Then we had gone preaching to the 
Europeans all through southern India. Step by step we have to 
follow on. 
A Summons God leads very strangely. I remember once when I landed at 

to ujarat Bombay — it was when I first went out as a missionary bishop — 
there was a strange impression — that is all I can call it — that 
God had a work for us to do up there in Gujarat, about three 
hundred miles north of Bombay. There are some ten million 
people there who speak the same language. I said to the brethren 
then, "We should have some work up there." But one year after 
another went past, and we never opened the work, until at last, 
when I returned from this country — I think it was in 1895 or 
1896 — I found a telegram waiting, asking me to go up to Gujarat, 
to a certain place named, because there was a very important 
movement there that required attention. I replied by telegram 
that I would come next night. I went up and spent the day under 
a banyan tree. They had a number of inquirers, and we explained 
to them what all this meant, the whole day long. In the course 
of the afternoon I baptized forty-three persons. We sent to a 
village and bought some dried raisins, and we made some raisin 
wine as best we could, and, with some cakes baked on the ashes 
for bread, I administered the Lord's Supper for the first time to 
those new converts. I tried to teach them to conduct family 
prayer. I think, if I remember correctly, that it was only per- 
haps some two or three years after that Bishop Foss and Doctor 
Goucher, under the same tree, collected an immense assembly of 
Christian people, and baptized with their own hands two hundred 
and twenty-five persons. Bishop Warren had intended to go out 



THE OPEN DOOR IN SOUTHERN ASIA 185 

this year, but has postponed the visit for good reasons for twelve 
months. He would have met under the same banyan tree, if he 
had gone, a thousand converts presented for baptism. So it goes. 

I give just a few illustrations. When I talk in this way I trust No Sounding 
there is no one here who will feel like rising and asking me why a Retreat 
we go so far afield. It is because the field is so wide, the people 
are so many, the harvest is so great. The tokens of God's pres- 
ence are unmistakable. The still small voice in one hundred 
thousand hearts prompts us to believe that God is speaking to us 
to go forward. There is no such thing as going back in the true 
missionary field. There is no turning of the back upon any foe. 
Our face is to the front, and we must maintain that attitude until 
all the millions of earth are converted to God. There is no going 
back. 

But still some will say that we need not have gone to these The Beckon- 
distant fields, they are so far away. But there is the beckoning JJJ* Hand of 
hand of God. I would ask you, as men who believe in the mis- 
sionary enterprise, Is it of men or is it of God ? It is one of the 
two, and there is no mistake. If it is of God we must obey, and 
if it is of God we must believe in his guiding hand. We read the 
story of the old pillar of fire and pillar of cloud, followed by the 
people of God across the wilderness. Some men tell us nowa- 
days that that story is not to be taken literally. Others accept it as 
absolutely literal. I will tell you how it is with me : however it 
may have been in the days of Moses, it is real now. We are to 
follow God now, and I am a great deal more concerned with the 
practical theology of this new century than I am with those who 
are not perfectly certain about events that happened in former 
days. I know what that story means to me. Some one will ask, 
"Do you ever see a pillar of fire? Do you ever hear a voice that 
you cannot understand? Are these miraculous tokens ever given 
to us?" No, I can't say that I have seen them, or that I covet 
them. I will even say that I do not wish for them, for I think it 
would weaken my faith, and would make me careless, if I could 
only trust to outward tokens that every man could see and no 
man could misunderstand. But there is the still small voice, that The still 
something which makes Methodist people say "I feel," which ma oxce 
enables you to feel the providential movings of God, something 
that was referred to by one of the speakers to-day, that once stole 
into my own heart, when for the first time, away down about the 



1 86 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A Prophetic 
Conviction 



The Malay 
Peninsula 



Straits of Malacca, I began to feel a strange, inexplicable interest 
in the Philippine Islands. I thought — perhaps it was the rem- 
nants of my Irish nature — that because they told me that I could 
go into any of that vast group except the Philippine Islands, 
where the Spaniards would not let us go, that I must go. I not 
only felt a desire to go where they told me I could not, but there 
sprang up in my heart a strange impression that sometime I would 
go. At my next visit they told me about a man who had gone 
there to sell Bibles and Testaments, and that the Spaniards had 
him in prison within two days. Again I wished to go, and I 
talked with this man, and by this time I began to have a feeling 
that I was going. The story is too long, but / have been there; 
that part has been confirmed. Now, as it has been with me, in 
this case, I think there is no manner of doubt that we have been 
led on step by step elsewhere. We have seen this work expand- 
ing, until now, on the western borders, almost up to the borders 
of Persia, in sight of the city of Kandahar, the way is open. The 
Indian government has gone up there and established a military 
station, and just above it they have pierced the mountain with a 
tunnel, and at the mouth of the tunnel they have rails enough to 
construct a railway to the city of Kandahar. And when we go 
up there we can go through that tunnel, and from the other side 
we can look out over Central Asia, and see the distant city of Kan- 
dahar. Away up at that mountain outpost is a Methodist church, 
and one of the last letters I had from Bishop Warne tells me of 
his visit there, and of the membership and of the outlook. 

Then you turn and go away down again until you have crossed 
the Indian empire, and go about two thousand miles from Cal- 
cutta until you come to the equatorial city of Singapore. We 
were led there, I think, in a providential way. Once we had 
taken our station at Singapore we began to work back up the 
peninsula. On the map the Malay Peninsula, which you attach 
very little importance to, looks like a little narrow strip of land. 
It is about the size of New York and Pennsylvania together. It 
is not densely populated. It is a rich country — the tin of the 
world nearly all comes from there. The Chinese immigrants 
are coming in very rapidly. We have occupied three or four 
stations on that peninsula — the great city of Penang and the 
amazing city of Singapore. The people who come to Singapore 
are from all those islands ; from Borneo, which is larger than 



THE OPEN DOOR IN SOUTHERN ASIA 187 

France ; from New Guinea, as large as the Austrian empire, and 
Java, equal to about the area of Cuba — from all that vast 
region people are coming to the central point. As a matter of 
course you may expect that some of them will be converted. We 
had a young man converted and baptized in Singapore, a grad- 
uate, first of Ohio Wesleyan University, and then of Yale, who 
is now conducting an independent school in the city of Batavia at 
his own expense. He sent me a hundred dollars about a year 
ago from that point. That is what you might call spontaneous 
work. 

Then there is the great island of Borneo ; you know something a Missionary 
about it. It has a sparse population. Has it ever occurred to t0 Borneo 
you, the reason why? It is because of a peculiar custom which 
they have throughout all that region, the people being called head- 
hunters. A man is said not to be in a position to ask any maiden 
to become his bride until he has killed somebody and polished 
his skull and attached it as an ornament to the ridgepole of his 
house. They have a belief that when they have done this all the 
virtues of the murdered man will become the possession of the 
man who kills him. If the murdered man is brave this man will 
have his courage; and if he is strong this man will have his 
strength. We sent a missionary there some few years ago, and 
he remained ten months — I mean Dr. Luering, the wonderful 
linguist we have there, one of the most marvelous German mis- 
sionaries in the world. This man had been there ten months, 
when a death occurred in our upper mission, and we had to recall 
him. He went down to the village to say that the steamer which 
brought him the letter would go out in the morning, and he must 
return at once, and he had come to say good-bye. The headman 
of the village begged him not to go, but he said that the going was 
imperative. They urged and he finally said, "If you will give me 
a satisfactory assurance that you will be Christians I will come 
back or send some one to take my place." The headman said, 
"O, I will be a Christian." "Yes," replied the missionary, "you 
have told me that a good many times, but you don't keep your 
word. Give me a pledge." "What pledge do you want?" Look- 
ing up to the ridgepole of the house, where there were ninety 
skulls, every one of them belonging to some one killed by this 
man, "Give me," said the missionary, "one of those skulls, and I A Cranial 
will give you my promise that we will come back sometime." pled S e 



1 88 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

The man sprang to his feet and laid his hand upon his creese, 
for it is a glaring insult to ask a man for one of those precious 
skulls. Dr. Luering looked him quietly in the face. "You said 
you were going to be a Christian, and Christians never kill. Now, 
if you are sincere, you won't do it." The man put up his knife, 
and said, "Take one." Grasping one of those knives, Dr. 
Luering climbed up and cut the string and brought away with 
him a skull of one of these murdered inhabitants of Borneo. 
Shortly afterward he was called to Germany, and he took the 
skull with him. The skull of that unfortunate man is traveling 
about through the cities of Germany to the present day, for Dr. 
Luering could never get it back again. Some one now and then 
would ask us, "Are you going to establish a mission in Borneo ?" 
Not long ago we heard a wonderful story. Since the Boxer 
movement the people of China are allowed to take their wives and 
daughters with them when they leave the empire. Formerly they 
were not, and that was a great hindrance to emigration from that 
empire. Bishop Warne, when on his way to Manila, heard that 
six or seven hundred people were actually on their way from the 
Foochow country to plant a colony in Borneo. When he' heard 
this, at the last moment, he canceled the ticket which he had 
taken on the steamer, jumped on another steamer, and made for 
a point where he could intercept these men, went with them on 
the same vessel, landed with them, saw them build their huts, 
found among them one or two local preachers, got them together, 
put one man in charge, and thus Methodism was planted in the 

The Planting great island of Borneo. The next thing I heard of that colony 
of Methodism & , „ . , • ti 1 t 

in Borneo was tnat tney were a11 dying. It was a sickly place. I was re- 
minded then of what Bishop Warne had written: "I do not 
know but this ship may be the Mayflower of a future empire. It 
may be that this first colony shall be the leader of others that are 
to follow, and we shall build a great Christian empire in the 
island of Borneo." I remembered how there was great sickness 
and death among the first settlers from the Mayflower. It has 
turned out as it did in the other case ; some died, perhaps a hun- 
dred or more returned to China, but the colony is flourishing, 
and we have now a membership there of between seven and eight 
hundred adult Christians. 

In closing, I would say that I was asked here if it is true that 
we have one hundred thousand people in India asking for bap- 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE WORLD I89 

tism. I have been assured that this number is not an exaggera- ^ Multitude 
tion. I wrote for the figures, and my correspondent replied, "We Waiting for 
could report a much larger number than this ; we could baptize ap 18m 
the whole one hundred thousand within the next twelve months 
if we had the means to employ native teachers to go among 
them and teach them just the rudiments of Christian doctrine 
and Christian life." My own impression is that we might mul- 
tiply that number if we had the means, and there is hardly any 
limit to it at all. 

Bishop Moore, in the very kind remarks that he made, referred One Million 
to the fact that I am not as strong as I used to be. I have reason Converts 
to believe that he is perhaps correct, that I am not as strong as I 
was in earlier years. But as he made the remark I remembered 
what I had said publicly, that I trusted that God would spare my 
life until I should see one million converts in India alone within 
the bounds of our own work. I believe I shall see it. I believe — 
and I have used this expression before — that if the Protestant 
Churches of these United States would unite together, would 
look that problem in the face, if they would take the lesson to 
heart that God is teaching them, that within ten years we might 
have ten millions in India, who are worshiping idols to-day, 
either within the pale of the Christian Church or inquiring the 
way thither. But if my own poor life is spared until I shall see 
that million gathered within our native churches in India, then I 
shall thank God, and these poor feet, which shrink and falter now, 
with unutterable joy shall walk through the gates of day ! 



WHY THE WORLD SHOULD BE SPEEDILY 
EVANGELIZED 

The Rev. E. M. Taylor, D.D. 

Let us catch, if possible, the divine idea wrapped up in the mis- God's 
sionary propaganda of the world. What is God's thought in the oug 
gift of Christianity to the children of men? Tersely defined, it may 
be stated in the following simple words. It is God's chosen way 
of getting the best things of the kingdom of heaven into human 
life through the loving, willing cooperation of man. The highest 
expression and realization of that method he has given us in the 
character and teachings of Jesus Christ. Hence our first duty 



190 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Mind of 
Christ 



the Five 
Thousand 



The Parables 



The Lord's 
Prayer 



in unfolding the subject of this address is to discover the thought 
of Christ in relation to the extension of his kingdom in the world. 
Here the Church finds its supreme authority for Christian 
missions. 

First, the bedrock of our obligation as a Christian Church is in 
the delegated power and authority of the Son of God. Let any- 
one follow the prevailing attitude of the mind of Christ in the 
New Testament and he cannot fail to catch his view of world- 
wide dominion. We are commissioned to win the world as his 
followers. The Christian Church stands for Christian im- 
perialism. Christ's solicitude for the entire race is the broadest 
and deepest thought in the wonderful story of his life, and a 
great part of that wonderful intercessory prayer for his disciples 
is that they might be one with him in his intense longing and 
sacrificial efforts to enthrone himself in the heart of every 
human being. 

Recall that day when our Lord preached to the great multitude 
until the late hours of the afternoon, and his disciples requested 
him to send the people away. Turning to them, he said, "They 
need not depart. Give ye them to eat." And then, taking the 
five loaves and two fishes, he fed, by the aid of his disciples, the 
five thousand people. This is the great missionary miracle of the 
New Testament, and the only one that is recorded four times by 
the writers of the Gospels. 

Study the Master's method of teaching by parable, and the same 
broad, comprehensive view of his kingdom is there enunciated. 
The grain of mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, expands till 
it becomes a great tree so that the birds of the air find shelter in 
its branches. Looking at the housewife as she kneads her dough, 
he says, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a 
woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was 
leavened." Was there ever a more impressive altruism given to 
this world than Christ's reply to his loquacious inquisitor in the 
parable of the Good Samaritan ? 

A literary and spiritual analysis of the Lord's Prayer emphasizes 
this same broad and comprehensive view of the Christ dominion 
in the world. Before we can claim one personal petition men- 
tioned in that prayer we must be filled with the desire to aid by 
our efforts that continuous progress, under the power of God, 
which is to effectuate the renovation of the world by the estab- 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE WORLD I9I 

lishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth. "Thy kingdom 
come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven" — that is the 
great missionary overture of the Lord's Prayer. 

Furthermore, note the tone of those postresurrection speeches The last 
of our Lord to his disciples. During those days no other com- Command 
mand of such sweeping force is recorded. Note well the words 
of the great commission given to his followers in their last earthly 
interview. Christ stands with an open grave behind him and the 
open heaven before him. At his girdle hang the keys of universal 
dominion. At that solemn moment there passes from his lips 
into the ears of his disciples the most audacious and imperative 
command ever given to men: "All power is given unto me in 
heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, bap- 
tizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I 
have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto 
the end of the world." Brothers ! there is only one message in 
all Scripture on this subject. The command is to conquer the 
world. The message of the glorified Christ to all his followers is, 
"The uttermost parts of the earth." 

The Duke of Wellington was once greeted by a subordinate Marching 
officer in these words : "Sire, do you not think that it is a waste 0rders 
of time and a squandering of precious lives to send our English 
boys and girls to these pagan countries to endure the suffering of 
foreign mission work?" "Sir," replied the Iron Duke, "the 
Christian is called Christ's soldier. Look well to your marching 
orders — 'Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every 
creature/ " 

Second, the home Church must speedily respond to the present Reflex 
missionary emergency in order to retain the presence of the living, 
conquering Christ in her own experience. The reflex action of 
the foreign missionary work upon the home Church is worthy of 
the profoundest consideration. There is a disposition to be found 
in many individuals and churches that regards the message of 
Jesus Christ as intended to alleviate personal pains, to modify 
personal difficulties, to give a spirit of assurance against personal 
inconvenience, disaster, and trouble in this world ; to regard the 
Gospel as a kind of building and loan association in which we 
may make safe investments and secure a comfortable income. 
Here is need of a warning note in our present emergency. The 



Influence 
of Missions 



192 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Christianity 
Necessarily 
Militant 



A Stimulus 
Needed 



Church that allows itself to be nursed in a spirit of sybaritic ease, 
that furnishes first-class entertainment in the form of fine preach- 
ing, enchanting music, and all that simply pertains to the success 
of a local place ot worship, without realizing the broader and 
more comprehensive view of Christ's Gospel, may be a very 
respectable club of men and women, but it is discredited by Jesus 
Christ and is doomed. It is not in good standing with Almighty 
God as it is related to the evangelization of this world. Woe be 
to the Church that follows in that train ! Our success in the home 
Church rests, therefore, on our zeal and service for those in the 
"uttermost parts of the earth/' The Church has come to such 
an emergency and opportunity that she must give in order to live. 
She must bend to the influence of Christ's world-wide love or 
break under the authority of his law. 

Napoleon once said, "It is a maxim in the military art that the 
army which remains in its intrenchments is beaten." A stay-at- 
home Christianity is not Christianity in any sense of the word. A 
nonmissionary Church disobeys the greatest commandment of 
her Lord and sins against her own normal life. "There is that 
scattereth and yet increaseth, and there is that which withholdeth 
more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty." It is the Church 
that is on the imperial march of extending Christ's kingdom in 
the world that has the promise of his abiding presence. "Go ye 
to all nations" is the condition of his promised presence. "Lo, I 
am with you." 

The missionary propaganda to-day rests more heavily on the 
Church than ever before in her history, and she stands in pressing 
need of a tonic to brace her for the emergency of the hour. O 
that she could see with her Lord's eyes, and feel with her Lord's 
heart, and rise to the vigor of the game that is to take the world 
for Christ! The fields are now white for the harvest as never 
before. The diplomacy of nations has brought the various 
peoples of the world together in a federation of commercial in- 
terests. The efforts on the part of modern civilization to place 
the entire world under the dominion of Christian law; the com- 
parative study of the world's great religions; the losing game 
that pagan nations find they are playing against the commercial 
and social developments of Christian nations ; the world-wide 
openings and world-wide facilities of national intercourse — these 
are God's modern methods of saying to his modern Calebs and 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE WORLD I93 

Joshuas, "Go ye up and possess the land." "Where the word of a 
king is, there is power." 

If the Church has any appreciation of the mind of Christ, if Loyalty to 
she has any desire to obey her Lord in anything, she must give christ 
heed to his imperial command. Her loving loyalty to the cause 
of missions is the measure of her appreciation of the Son of 
God, who loved her and gave himself for her. It may be safely 
affirmed that the Church has never yet met in a commensurate 
way the challenge of the world and the command of her Lord to 
use her time, her talent, and her resources for the evangelization 
of the world. If we fail to take advantage of the present emer- 
gency and opportunity the day is not far distant when we shall 
have no Christian Church from which to send the loving Gospel 
of the Son of God. 

There is no demoralization to spiritual life more subtle, dense, Neglect of 
and malignant in its attack upon the soul than a conscience alive °PP° rtunit y 
to high ideals and conscious of great opportunities and yet ever 
shading away from those ideals and neglecting those opportuni- 
ties in the general practical work of life. Such action is an 
opiate to obligation, a chill to enthusiasm. This is the condition 
of much of our Church life to-day in connection with our mis- 
sionary emergency and opportunity. Here is the breeding pen 
of all those phantoms of ignorance, timidity, indifference, and 
distaste that are hovering vampirelike over our beloved Zion. 
We are playing with eternal verities. We need a fresh anointing 
of the Holy Spirit to enable us to grasp the opportunity of bring- 
ing a lost world to the fold of the Good Shepherd. 

There are some terrific examples of the manner in which this Kadesh- 
indifference has been treated by God in the history of his people. arnea 
Do we recall that day when the Almighty brought the children 
of Israel to the open-door emergency at Kadesh-barnea ? There 
the chosen people stood upon the verge of the promised land. 
Twelve commissioners were sent over to view the country. It 
was an open door, a great opportunity. They went over and 
looked at the land, and came back with their report. Ten 
twelfths of them did just what a large number of the Church is 
doing to-day in relation to the Open-door Emergency in foreign 
lands. They said, "The inhabitants were giants, and we were like 
grasshoppers in their presence. They have walled cities, and we 
are unable to take them." Majorities ruled in that day as they 
13 



of Meroz 



194 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

do at the present time. Caleb and Joshua were optimists and 
made their minority report, with faith in God back of it; they 
were stoned into silence. What was the result? Jehovah closed 
the door of opportunity and turned his people back into the 
wilderness for forty years. A generation sunk into oblivion, and 
the express trains of divine progress are forty years behind 
schedule time to this hour. Look, if you please, at this crime of 
indifference as it lies in the mind of God illustrated on another 
page of the sacred story. Sisera with his wild warriors had by 
forced marches crossed into the kingdom of Israel. How Israel 
cringed before that army with its nine hundred chariots of 
iron! Then Deborah and Barak sounded the war bugles, gath- 
ering the hosts of Israel to the combat, and utterly destroyed 
the army of the alien. In the song that Deborah sang after the 
victory there was a plaintive note; a funeral strain was woven 
The Curse into the paean of praise. "Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of 
the Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they 
came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against 
the mighty." What was the cause of that bitter malediction 
against that little town among the hills of Palestine? Simply 
ease-loving indifference to a great emergency. "We are safe. 
Our vineyards are ripening their grapes in the sunshine. Our 
flocks are grazing undisturbed. No enemy is likely to come our 
way. The other tribes of the nation can take care of the battle, 
and we will help sing the songs of victory/' But the curse of 
Jehovah obliterated her from the face of the earth. There is not 
an antiquarian geographer that has been able to locate the site of 
Meroz unto this day. 

Bear with me while I try to press this thought home by another 
illustration taken from the field of Christian history. The land 
where the cross of our Lord was lifted, with all the spots which 
the Saviour had consecrated with his presence, is to-day and has 
been since the seventh century of our era in the possession of the 
brutal and infidel Turk. That dire calamity was made possible 
through the indifference and inactivity of the Christian Church 
at a supreme moment of missionary opportunity, recalling the 
words of divine warning: "Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: 
. . . then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed 
the Rock of his salvation." 

Brothers, pardon the intensity and earnestness of my plea. As 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE WORLD 195 

I listened to the speeches from this platform by the representa- Workers 
tives from our foreign field revealing the terrible need of the Ay ailaDle ; 
pagan world, telling the story of barriers removed and hearts Needed 
prepared by the providence of God for the reception of the Gospel ; 
as I hear the views declaring that from the efforts of the Student 
Volunteer Movement there are hundreds of cultured and trained 
young men and women ready at this hour to enter upon the work 
of taking the Gospel of the Great Physician to heal the heart-sore 
of the pagan world, then I am faced with the shameful fact that 
this help cannot connect with the need because the Church counts 
and uses her dollars for selfish purposes and refuses to count 
their value in the high spiritual exchanges of the world. Such 
considerations cause me to tremble and to fear that the day of 
vengeance of our God may be near at hand. I pray God to with- 
hold the thunderbolt, and give her a proper conception of 
stewardship as related to advancing the kingdom of heaven 
among men. 

Third, the Church should stir herself to aggressive work in A Sense of 
world evangelization through her sense of gratitude and apprecia- ra x u e 
tion of the heroic services rendered by the noble men and women 
who have opened the way in foreign fields. The last one hundred 
years have witnessed some of the sublimest achievements ever 
recorded in the story of the race, simply as the result of foreign 
missionary work. These were the choice and fiery spirits who 
went in advance of the masses of the Christian Church, inspiring 
them and leading them onward to the present emergency. Such 
men as Carey, Cox, Livingstone, Judson, Butler, Taylor, and 
Thoburn caught the secret of holy zeal and Christian love for 
humanity that led them to encounter enormous difficulties — diffi- 
culties of language, customs, and prejudices; plunging into 
pestiferous wildernesses ; wading through malarious swamps ; 
scorched by tropical heat and bitten by winter's cold ; encounter- 
ing the savagery of barbarous tribes; standing undaunted amid 
the wild storms of rage and hatred that burst upon them in the 
Sepoy rebellion and fierce Boxer uprisings. 

Through such toil, danger, and sacrifice these men and women Face to Face 
have placed our holy Christianity face to face with the great pagan p^ nism 
religions of the world. So thorough has been their work and so 
indefatigable their toil that there exists no considerable people 
on the face of the globe to-day among whom the Gospel is not 



I96 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

being preached. The skirmish line of missionaries has opened 
the battle. The contest is on, and we must stand by the result, 
accept the challenge, and go forward to conquer. 

To doubt would be disloyalty, 
To falter would be sin." 

If the Church accepts the present open door of opportunity and 
responds to it in a way commensurate with her resources there is 
little doubt but that another half century will bring a majority of 
the human race under the direct power of Christianity. God has 
put the unmistakable seal of his approbation upon the work. This 
is recognized by the world's material forces as they come in con- 
tact with our foreign missionary work. 
A Significant Sir Bartle Frere, while governor of Bombay, wrote regarding 
Testimony ^ wor k f Christian missions as follows : "I speak simply as to 
matters of experience and observation, just as a Roman prefect 
might have reported to Trajan, and I assure you that, whatever 
may be told to the contrary, the teachings of Christianity among 
six hundred and sixty millions of civilized, industrious Hindus 
and Mohammedans in India are effecting changes, moral, social, 
and political, which for extent and rapidity of effect are far more 
extraordinary than anything you or your fathers have witnessed 
in modern Europe." 
T^-f'S^T 6 ^et me bring still nearer to the fair-skinned, blue-eyed men 
and women of the Anglo-Saxon race their obligation of gratitude 
for the service rendered them by Christian missionaries. "Re- 
member that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and 
that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty 
hand and by a stretched-out arm." You cannot get around it. 
"Love ye the stranger, for ye were strangers also in the land of 
Egypt." Suffer just a rough sketch of the primitive Anglo- 
Saxon and his tribe. Had we been living fourteen hundred years 
ago, and our eyes cast toward the Scandinavian peninsula in 
northern Europe, we would have been forced to behold one of 
the most terrific human beings, so far as coarseness and barbaric 
cruelty was concerned, that ever lived — our Anglo-Saxon an- 
cestor. He was the irrepressible pirate of the North Sea. War 
was regarded by him as the only occupation for men. Gambling 
and drunkenness were his pastimes. These cruel warriors re- 
garded it a shame for a man to die in bed. If they could not fall 



Anglo-Saxon 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE WORLD 197 

in battle they cut "runes" into their own necks and breasts, and 
expired singing war songs while the blood streamed down their 
bodies. They were genuine barbarian pirates. Their gods were 
the deified forms of passions, power, and cruelty. 

4 As their gods were, so their laws were — 

Thor the strong could rove and steal ; 
So through many a peaceful inlet 

Tore the Norseman's pirate keel." 

When they desired to know what their gods were thinking about 
or what the turn of a battle was to be they took fair young girls, 
shut them up in a large wicker cage, and shot arrows into their 
trembling flesh to see which way the blood would run. They 
brought devastation and cruelty wherever they went. This man. Devastation 
and his tribe wearied of that work on the shores of Europe and and Cruelt y 
then struck the prow of his vessel into the ocean westward and 
landed on the coast of Britain. It was fourteen hundred years 
ago when he made that voyage. Take an inventory of his 
character and his goods as he lands. He puts ashore some 
materials he has brought over in his pirate craft, constructs a 
vehicle of some form, hitches a diminutive ox or ass on one side 
and his wife on the other. If the load is too heavy he harnesses 
his sixteen-year-old girl at the end of the pole. And if wife or 
daughter fail to draw her portion of the load he lifts his rawhide 
whip and flays her side with as little feeling as he does the beast 
on the other side of the pole. If you want to trade with him you 
must do it by barter; he has no money as a medium of ex- 
change. He has no written language. Not a syllable of his 
speech can be represented in written form. There are some 
points of interest connected with that girl at the end of the pole. 
Last night her lover came to see her and requested her hand in 
marriage. She looked him over for a moment and then with 
haughty scorn replied : "You come to ask my hand in marriage. 
You have not given the birds of the air a taste of human flesh for 
three months. The forest wolves have been thirsty for human 
blood for six months. Go wet your hands in the blood of your 
human foe and bring me the testimony of your courage, and I will 
listen to your wooing." There is a strain of that blood in our 
veins to-night — good old pagan, barbarous ancestry have we all. 
Early in the progress of their devastating march over England 



198 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Work of 
Missionaries 



Evolution of 
a Race 



A Contrast in 
Womanhood 



these barbarians were met by zealous missionaries of the cross. 
They halted that marauding host in the name of Jesus Christ, and 
told them the story of God's redemptive love ; and this wild man 
of the north forest was broken into submission, and gave his heart 
to Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. He kept on his way up the 
country, not to kill and destroy, but to lay the foundation stones 
of the great British empire and of the United States of America. 

What is the result? The most romantic and thrilling story of 
the evolution of a race of which the world makes record. That 
man who had no money as a medium of exchange has founded 
and conducted the Gibraltar of a world's finances — the Bank of 
England. That man who had no written language has evolved a 
language in which the great proclamations of human brother- 
hood and freedom have been written — the compact of the May- 
flower cabin and our Declaration of Independence. He who was 
so brutal and cruel has born to him sons bearing the great names 
of John Bright, William E. Gladstone, George Washington, 
Abraham Lincoln, and William McKinley. The man who had 
no word to represent refinement or culture, and who could not 
appreciate a song above the howl of a wolf, his language has 
caught the music of Shakespeare, Browning, Tennyson, Long- 
fellow, and Whittier, and the great hymn authors that have made 
glad the heart of the Christian world. 

The contrast in the life of that cruel-hearted Saxon girl is 
still more wonderful. Ah! when we tell the story of Saxon 
civilization in this world we must not forget the Christian char- 
acter and tender heart of the woman who kept step by the side 
of her husband in the mighty march. From that Anglo-Saxon 
girl has come a line of queenly daughters. She became the 
mother of Lady Huntingdon, Lady Henry Somerset (the daughter 
of a hundred earls), our own Frances Willard, Mary A. Liver- 
more, Julia Ward Howe, and all that magnificent galaxy of 
Saxon womanhood whose radiance is blessing the world to-day. 
It was a daughter of that cruel Saxon girl who in queenly 
beauty sat upon the throne of England and held the scepter of 
Christian dominion for sixty years. What is the cause of this 
wonderful transformation scene? Simply the story of God's 
redemptive love given to us in the Gospel of Jesus Christ 
and taken to our ancestors by the zeal and sacrifice of foreign 
missionaries. 



THE EVANGELIZATION OF THE WORLD 199 

Fourth, the besotted, degraded, hopeless condition of the pagan The Plea of 
world to-day pleads for immediate rescue in the name of Christ. Pa S anl8m 
The horrible story of the corrupting influence of paganism upon 
the lives of the people is too familiar to require description here. 
Suffice it to say they are the children of our common heavenly 
Father, and their cry in the wilderness should be heard by the 
Christian Church. The condition of the pagan world to-day 
is the same as it was in the nations that challenged the zeal of 
the Church in the apostolic age. 

" On that hard pagan world disgust and secret loathing fell, 
Deep weariness and sated lust made human life a hell." 

A despairing, hopeless world cries from the stygian darkness of 

heathenism, "Come over and help us." Try to imagine what our 

own civilization would be with the idea of God as a loving 

Father and Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord eliminated from 

our thought. It would mean the destruction of all we hold dear 

and precious in our modern life. That is the condition of eight 

hundred millions of our brothers and sisters in the pagan world 

at this hour. Let the keen observation and dramatic expression 

of Mr. Kipling serve us here: "The foundations of their life 

are rotten — utterly, bestially rotten." Hear this awful indict- The 

ment of Asiatic womanhood from the pen of Mrs. Isabella Bird Indictment 

r by Observers 

Bishop: "Of the Christless population of the world over five 

hundred millions are women. Throughout Asia the natural result 
of the universal distrust of women by men, and of the degrading 
views held concerning woman, is seclusion behind high walls, in 
separate houses, known to us as the harem, the zenana, and the 
anderun. I have seen much of the inmates of all . . . Such 
contact has banished from my mind, so far as Asiatic countries 
are concerned, all belief in purity in woman and innocence in 
childhood. They know nothing. They have no ideals. Dress, 
personal adornment, and subjects connected with sex are their 
sole interests. They are regarded as possessing neither soul nor 
immortality. Except as mothers of sons, they are absolutely 
despised, and are spoken of in China as the mean ones within the 
gates." 

I appeal to you Christian men and women, is the hell described 
by Milton or Dante comparable with that picture and its impli- 
cations ? 



200 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Sixteen 
Acres for 
Image 
Worship 



" The restless millions wait 
The light whose dawning 
Maketh all things new : 
Christ also waits, 
But men are slow and late. 
Have we done what we could? 
Have I ? Have you ? " 

Not long since I heard a secretary of the American Board, who 
had made a six-months' missionary inspection tour of missions 
through India, use words like these : "I went into a pagan temple 
and saw sixteen acres of ground dedicated to the worship of 
pagan gods. In the center of this inclosure was a small pool 
called the Fountain of Life. Its contents were made up of the 
votive offerings given by the pilgrims and poured upon the images 
representing the pagan deities. After the libations of water, oil, 
and honey had been poured on the god image remnants ran down 
upon the ground, trampled under foot of the thousands of pil- 
grims, and thence through gravity found their way into the pool, 
or Fountain of Life. The deluded suppliants for peace with their 
god came to this fountain and dipped their fingers in it, then 
touching in turn their hearts, their tongues, and their foreheads, 
hoping thus to find peace of soul through the favor of the gods. I 
saw hundreds go through this performance, but not one face 
showed by any expression that the blessing of peace had been 
bestowed ; the blank hopeless look of paganism was still there. 
Later in the day we were driven to a community where native 
Christians were holding a camp meeting. We arrived at the 
closing moments of the afternoon service. The congregation 

ATriumphant were standing and singing heartily the familiar hymn : 

Christian 

Hymn ' There is a fountain filled with blood 

Drawn from Immanuel's veins.' 

There was the expression of joy and gladness in every coun- 
tenance. The invisible realities of heaven had found a place in 
their souls." 

Beloved in the Lord, it is ours to help make the last verse of 
that grand hymn a reality in all the heathen darkness of our 
world : 

" Thou dying Lamb ! thy precious blood 

Shall never lose its power, 
Till all the ransomed world of God 

Are saved, to sin no more." 



WHAT RETRENCHMENT MEANS 201 

WHAT " RETRENCHMENT " MEANS 

Bishop Cyrus D. Foss 

We are accustomed to think of retrenchment as a very re- 
spectable word. It is suggestive of thrift, economy, careful 
expenditure, the cutting off of all unnecessary expense. But in 
the sense in which this topic has been given to me, and under 
the circumstances in which we are called to consider it, it has a 
very different meaning. It refers to the cutting down of our 
missionary appropriations in recent years, and especially last 
year ; and so, I am almost disposed to say, to drifting astern. 

I ask you to consider it first in its relation to the Church at 
large; secondly, in relation to the work of the General Mission- 
ary Committee ; lastly, in relation to the missionary fields. 

I. In respect to the Church at large, in this sense of it, retrench- Meaning 
ment leads to a most injurious and disastrous interpretation of commission 
the great commission of the Saviour, "Go ye into all the world, 
and preach the Gospel to every creature." It causes misappre- 
hension and a dulling of the conscience and heart of the Church 
as to the meaning of that great commission. It is a very interest- 
ing and a very surprising fact that great truths, standing to our 
apprehension now as plainly revealed on the very surface of the 
inspired book, made plain by distinct utterances of the great 
Head of the Church himself, have sunk very slowly into the 
heart and conscience of the Church. Indeed, God's usual method 
of making operative and influential any great truth, vital to the 
life of the world, has been not simply by putting it into the Holy 
Scriptures, but by planting it newly from time to time in some 
capacious mind and glowing heart which obey his voice. As, 
for example, the truth of salvation by faith alone, taught in the Truth Newly 
Holy Scriptures with great distinctness, was very poorly appre- Incarnate 
hended for many a century, until God vitalized it in the soul of 
Martin Luther. And so also the truth of the witness of the Holy 
Spirit to personal salvation, taught in the Holy Scriptures dis- 
tinctly and in unmistakable terms, was not a living truth in the 
Church of England one hundred and seventy-five years ago, when 
God put it into the soul of John Wesley. I suppose when Wesley 
arose you could not have found one hundred and fifty men in all 
England who would dare say they knew their sins forgiven; 



202 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The 

Brotherhood 
of Man 



A 

Proclamation 
Inadequately 
Proclaimed 



and God took John Wesley in hand and, through fifteen years 
of most wonderful training, brought him from the condition of 
a servant of God, a very bondslave of Jesus Christ, into the 
living apprehension of his relation to God as a son; and the 
world learned the lesson, and now millions tell the same glad 
story. 

So it has been also with this great vitalizing truth which under- 
lies all missionary activity and all sociological uplift, and which 
finds expression in the great commission, the truth of the brother- 
hood of men through the Fatherhood of God. "Go ye into all 
the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature," said Jesus. 
It would seem that when that utterance had been given, and 
especially that when the day of Pentecost had come, every 
apostle should have gone forth with a profound conviction of the 
brotherhood of the race. But Simon Peter was there ; he heard 
the commission, he was present on the day of Pentecost, and 
preached that wonderful sermon which led to three thousand 
conversions ; yet he did not take in this lesson ; and six years 
afterward we hear him saying, as though through the teaching 
of an angel he had just got a patent on a new truth, "Verily I 
perceive that God is no respecter of persons." This same truth 
has been hidden in the hearts of some men all down through the 
ages ; and we have reason to hope that this truth of the brother- 
hood of man, which lies at the basis of all missionary endeavor, 
is to be made vital in the world, again and again and again, not 
by new revelations from on high, but in consonance with John 
Robinson's grand old aphorism, "More truth is yet to break out 
of God's most holy word." 

Now, I say that retrenchment, in the sense in which we are 
obliged to use the word to-night, utterly misinterprets this fun- 
damental postulate of the missionary movement. We are told 
that once several British soldiers were accosted by a Christian 
minister with this question, "Suppose your queen were to make 
a proclamation to be sent to all parts of the habitable globe, how 
long would it take her army and her navy to carry it?" and that 
those brave fellows, after thinking the whole matter over a few 
minutes, made answer, "We think, sir, it could be done in eighteen 
months." But the greatest proclamation ever given, uttered by 
the Saviour himself for the whole race of humankind, has been 
in the world for nineteen hundred years almost, and yet to this 



WHAT RETRENCHMENT MEANS 203 

hour more than one half of the people now living on the globe, 
to whom that proclamation was sent, have never yet heard it. 
No wonder that Dr. Duff should say, "Up to this time the Church 
has been merely playing at missions." 

At our General Missionary Committee last year a sharp cut A Cut in 
was made in the appropriations all along the line. What can the ^o^ opria ~ 
Church think except that we regard missions as a mere byplay, 
to be attended to when convenient and so far as convenient; for 
in this very same time I would have you remember that there has 
been no alarming depression in the business of the country, and 
other Christian operations except missions have had no serious 
setback. In these very years in which this cut in missions has 
been made I have not heard that there have been ten churches 
closed here in Cleveland, or thirty in Chicago ; I do not read that 
in every Conference in the connection Sunday schools are being 
disbanded and ministers dismissed. I do not learn that the 
country has been on the verge of ruin by some awful depression 
and panic. So far from this, our wealth has rolled up until 
within the recent decade it has been doubled and doubled again. 
In my boyhood we were astounded by the word "millionaire." 
Within twenty years we have been accustomed to "multimillion- 
aire," and presently we shall be accustomed to "billionaire." That 
"beastly prosperity" which Matthew Arnold flung as a sarcasm 
at the great metropolis of the West — we had better find out how 
much truth there may be in it for the whole land; and yet in 
such times as this we have been obliged to make an eight per 
cent cut in our missionary appropriations. 

2. Then, as to the General Missionary Committee, a few words, The General 
and only a very few. I well recall my first impressions concerning committee 
that committee, received from a speech of that greatest of mission- 
ary secretaries, Dr. John P. Durbin. For half an hour, by his 
marvelous eloquence, he enthralled a vast congregation with an 
account of the place of meeting, the personnel, and the methods of 
operation of the General Missionary Committee. In my own pres- 
ent office and before I entered it, altogether I have been a member 
of the General Missionary Committee about thirty times in suc- 
cessive years. The methods of its work are known to many here ; 
I cannot describe them to others who are not familiar with them, 
but this much is very clear: The appropriations made by such 
a body ought to be fixed under circumstances which make possible 



204 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A Week of 

Painful 

Business 



Effect of 

Retrench- 
ment 



Three Great 
Methods 



the careful consideration of every Mission under the care of the 
Church; ought to be made under circumstances such that the 
committee can say concerning this missionary field, where the 
need is most urgent, and the opportunity magnificent, "There 
must be this year a large increase;" and concerning this, "Is it 
not possible in this older Mission, which has had such good suc- 
cess and which is coming so rapidly toward self-support, that 
something may be taken off and be bestowed upon some newer 
and more needy field?" But this "retrenchment" has compelled 
the committee to make appropriations in a manner totally illog- 
ical, and we were obliged to scale down everywhere eight per cent ; 
until every man there felt almost guilty of a cruel wrong. The 
meeting last year and one or two other meetings of the com- 
mittee in recent years have made us feel it the most painful 
week's business in the whole year. We have been obliged to 
make the appropriations very much as the officers of a starving 
crew on a dismasted hulk in mid-ocean distribute totally inade- 
quate rations, so as to cause the least complaint. My brethren 
on the General Missionary Committee understand what I am 
talking about. We feel that we must come, in some near to- 
morrow, to a time when we can graduate these appropriations in 
a better way. 

3. But all this simply leads up to the next topic — the effect of 
retrenchment, as I have defined it, upon the mission fields. We 
went forth in the order of God's providence into distant lands to 
preach the Gospel. I cannot glance over the fields in this country 
at all. I cannot ask you to survey the fields which have been laid 
before you in countries partly or wholly civilized and under the 
dominion of a false Church. Let us glance at the heathen world, 
and as we do so I wish you to understand how painfully, how 
almost disastrously, this retrenchment has affected some of those 
fields and must still do so unless it gives place to larger contribu- 
tions from the Church. We went abroad; we undertook work 
in those heathen lands. God blessed the work ; we very soon 
had some success. Initial successes led to larger ones, and these 
to larger; and failures in some fields called for increased appro- 
priations, no less than successes. We have demonstrated these 
things already, that the three great methods of missionary opera- 
tion in heathen lands, set before us by the three forms of the 
great commission of the Saviour, are definitely operative and 



WHAT RETRENCHMENT MEANS 205 

successful. What are they? One form of the great commission 
is this : "As ye go, heal the sick, and say unto them, The kingdom 
of God is come unto you ;" that is philanthropy. Another is, "Go 
ye, teach all nations;" that is education. Another, "Go ye into 
all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature;" that is 
evangelism. Philanthropy, education, evangelism — these are the 
methods by which at Christ's command the Church has gone forth 
to attempt to save the world, and these methods have been grandly 
successful wherever faithfully applied. 

Now, what does initial success call for ? Larger appropriations. Results of 
We go forth as an army of conquest, and what nation has ever * mtlal 
sent forth an army without a perfect understanding before the 
army starts that successes and partial failures alike call for rein- 
forcements and larger operations? When we began our civil 
war and had the disaster of Bull Run, did that stop our opera- 
tions? Bull Run multiplied the Union army and toned up the 
muscle of the North. Great Britain undertook war in South 
Africa and had disaster after disaster, to what effect? Every 
disaster led immediately to the sending out of more forces and 
more appliances. We undertook war with Spain, under hard 
pressure, with great reluctance, to deliver Cuba. Suppose now 
that Dewey's fleet had been sunk in the harbor of Manila ; sup- 
pose that Shafter's army had been ground into powder, would we 
have stopped? No, every man of you knows that soldiers and 
ships of war would have been multiplied until a just contention 
should end in success and triumph. So it must be in this mission- 
ary endeavor. We initiate great undertakings; we get the be- 
ginnings of great successes, and then have here and there some 
failures. The lesson of the whole of them is not retrenchment, 
but progress, progress until this world is redeemed and saved. 

I fully understand, and so do you, that America can never save Office of the 
India, nor China, nor Japan, nor Korea. I perfectly understand c ^l^ n 
that every country must, under God, save itself, in the last event. 
But what is the office of the Christian Church in regard to the 
heathen world ? It is to make a fair beginning ; it is to plant the 
institutions of Christianity ; it is to build hospitals and orphanages 
and schools and colleges, and to begin the great work of evan- 
gelism, and to train up a native army for conquest, and to furnish 
the brain and the heart and the supervision and the example and 
the experience needful until the dead bones have come to life 



206 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

and begun to march, and until the native Church has grown 
strong enough to carry the Gospel to other lands, and take its 
place among the forces for the conquest of the world. And that 
work is only fairly begun in any of our heathen Missions to 
this hour. 

Let me show you how this necessity for retrenchment has 
worked in one land of the heathen world of which I know the 
most, because I have visited it and have within a few years given 
careful inspection and supervision to the Missions and Con- 
ferences there. The same principles would be reached by a similar 
statement from any one of my colleagues who has similarly inves- 
tigated China or Japan or Korea; but I happen to know most 
about India. 
Heathenism And now come with me, and for a little while forget that you 

at Benares are - m Christian America. I wish I could lay a magic carpet that 
would transport this audience for a few minutes to the very heart 
of the heathen world, and show you a little of what I saw and 
heard and felt. In India lies a vast territory, the peninsula of 
Hindustan, as large as the whole of the United States east of the 
Mississippi, with a population of two hundred and eighty-seven 
millions of human souls. Come with me to Benares and look at 
heathenism as you may see it there. Watch that bathing for 
religious purposes which goes on every day through all the morn- 
ing, for two miles along this sacred river, the Ganges, the most 
sacred stream in all India. On the second story of a house boat 
I rode up and down and witnessed the bathing of more than ten 
thousand persons, men and women promiscuously but decently, 
for religious purposes. It is the vilest stream I ever saw, vile be- 
yond description, dead bodies of animals floating down its waters, 
bamboo rafts with burned bodies upon them ; and yet they dip con- 
secrated brazen bowls into it and drink it by the pint for internal 
cleansing, and take it home as a precious gift to their friends. 
After observing this bathing I came ashore. There are thousands 
of shrines and hundreds of temples in Benares. I went into a great 
many, and in every one the symbols and implements of the idola- 
try of those people are so obscene that no photograph dare lay 
them on your table, and no words dare describe them. And this is 
Benares — the sacred city. As I came away from it I thought of 
Bishop Thomson's words on the same spot. He writes in one of 
his books, "It seemed to me that if I had taken another step down- 



WHAT RETRENCHMENT MEANS 2C»7 

ward I should have come to the open mouth of hell." After that 
visit, as I was riding on the cars at night and their jolting 
would waken me, it often seemed to me as if I myself was sub- 
merged in those filthy waters, and yet reaching after pearls. 

Come with me to Allahabad, another sacred city at the June- At 
tion of the Ganges and the Jumna. Annual bathing takes place a a a 
there. People are going to and fro. Fifteen thousand the day that 
I was there were bathing in those sacred waters. Beggars on every 
hand, the most blatant and impertinent you have ever met, with 
every simulation of deformity, which the sight of a policeman 
would quickly cause to disappear; and devotees in all forms of 
self-torture — some lying in the dust, covered all but their nostrils ; 
some with one foot planted above the other knee, firmly fixed 
there. I saw such a man and his left foot had never been down 
from his right knee in ten years. Others were on sharp spikes, 
sitting on them, standing on them, reclining on them, six or seven 
hundred little spikes driven into a plank eighteen inches wide. 
Seven years one poor fellow had been on one of these spike beds, 
and my friend bought from him two of these spikes, and gave 
me one which I carry with me always, as my own reminder of 
what it is to be a heathen and of the joy and blessedness of being 
a Christian. But I will not multiply such scenes. You will 
quickly take in a vivid sense of the unutterable intellectual twist 
and moral degradation and spiritual ruin which heathenism has 
brought to these two hundred and eighty-seven millions of your 
brothers and sisters. 

But there is a brighter side to it. Christianity has done its The Glory of 
work there, magnificent — imperfect, so far, but with successes a ure 
which greatly cheer all hearts. I wish that these missionaries, of 
whom I am glad to see so many on this platform, could tell you, 
little by little and day after day, the story of what has been 
familiar to some of them for forty years. But the Gospel went 
there and took hold with wondrous power. It was my pleasure 
while there to go far north, to the very foothills of the Himalayas, 
and from those hills to look upon that magnificent range of 
mountains, snow-clad, twenty-five thousand feet in height, equal 
to Mount Washington on top of Pike's Peak, and several thou- 
sand feet beside. Out of the side of one of these great peaks 
bursts the Ganges, from a magnificent glacier. I saw them at 
sunset retiring into the grayness of the night, and in the morning 



2o8 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Glory of 
the Faith 



Eleven Years 
of Marvelous 
Progress 



Eeal 
Conversions 



saw them come out under the light of the golden sun in magnifi- 
cent state — a sight I can never have equaled unless I go there 
again. But when I came down from those mountains to Naini 
Tal, lake of the Goddess Naini, and found on one end of it our 
Hindustani church and on the other our English-speaking church, 
on one side of it our boys' school and on the other our girls' 
school, I said to myself, "The lake of the goddess no longer — it 
should be Wesley Lake." And for four days I witnessed a sub- 
limer sight than those peaks of the Himalayas. It was a District 
Conference and Epworth League and camp meeting and every- 
thing else you could pack into four days. And all this on the 
spot where about forty years before William Butler reached 
forth the rod of faith and smote the rock of heathenism, saying 
in God's name, "Thou shalt break," and lo, the rill, and presently 
the stream, and now the river of American Methodism in India, 
which has been flowing for forty years. From that small begin- 
ning has come a most marvelous progress. The little one has 
become a thousand. 

Let me tell you in just two or three bits of figures this : When 
I was there five years ago I had been preceded eleven years before 
by Bishop Ninde. Let figures tell the story. I give you the 
figures at the beginning of the eleven years, and then at the end : 
At the beginning 7,000 communicants, when I was there 77,000 ; 
at the beginning of those eleven years 96 churches, when I was 
there 233 churches; at the beginning 313 Sunday schools, when 
I was there 2,400 Sunday schools ; at the beginning 14,000 
Sunday school scholars, when I was there 83,000 Sunday school 
scholars. Such were the magnificent successes which in the space 
of eleven years our Church had wrought in India, multiplying 
fortyfold on one line, elevenfold on another, six on another — an 
average of about ninefold. Is there any Church that can show 
greater Church and missionary progress in the same time? 

But it has not been simply figures. Were these people con- 
verted ? Does the Gospel save them ? I was led to search into that 
question with great care and a little anxiety ; for on the ship, as I 
was going over from Italy to India, I met a noble laird, Lord 
Kinnaird, who talked religion as familiarly as most men talk 
politics. He had been greatly blessed under the ministry of 
Dwight L. Moody and Henry Drummond, and was going out to 
India with his wife to inspect zenana work. He said to me one 



WHAT RETRENCHMENT MEANS 209 

day, "I hear that Bishop Thoburn has been baptizing a great 
many thousands of converts, he and his assistants ; are not they 
raw heathen?" "Yes, my lord." "But are not they very raw 
heathen?" I think they are, my lord." I was not going to own 
anything to him about my anxiety, but his inquiry set me to 
searching. I determined to find out, and this is a thing which an. 
old class leader, as I am, can find out; there is something that 
tells the story whether the converts are converted or not. When 
I got out to the camp meeting at the foot of the Himalaya 
Mountains I think I found out. I was there four days, during all 
the incidents of a crowded and most delightful camp meeting, a Native 
a District Conference, love feasts, Epworth League meeting, anti- « m J ) . 
tobacco meeting, and experience meetings of all kinds ; and never 
in my life, in any period of the old-time camp meeting fervor, 
have I heard more sermons and exhortations and prayers and 
experiences on the subject of the gift of the Holy Spirit as a 
witnessing Spirit to present salvation, and for enduement of 
power for the work of God, than I heard under those banyan 
trees in northern India in the four days of that camp meeting, 
at whicli there were present more than two thousand Hindustani 
converts. In the testimonies at the love feast there was no word 
of cant or sanctimoniousness ; but among the one hundred and 
eighteen persons who spoke there were twelve in succession who 
would have done honor to any love feast in this country; and I 
believe that those twelve men are better men than the twelve 
apostles were until after the day of Pentecost. So I became con- 
vinced that the converts were converted. 

Now, take into consideration the thought that there are more A Bishop's 
than one hundred thousand of such converts. You may think Ho P es 
I have wandered a little, but this applies directly to the fact I 
have in hand in this way: What has been the result of this 
retrenchment on this rapid evangelization going on in India? I 
think Bishop Thoburn is not here to-night, and I will say a word 
about him which I would not care to say in his presence. When 
he was elected missionary bishop he said in many a congregation, 
once or twice when I was present, that he soberly hoped to live 
to see the time when there would be ten thousand baptisms of 
native heathen in northern India in a single year. The Church 
listened in amazement and wondered — you wondered, whether 
these were the extravagant utterances of a half-crazed fanatic, 
14 



2IO 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Hasan Rasa 
Kahn 



A Field Ripe 
to Harvest 



or the inspired words of a veritable prophet of God in this genera- 
tion. I am happy to say that from the start I took the latter al- 
ternative, and I have thought from then to now of this wonderful 
little bunch of sanctified common sense and prophetic optimism 
called James M. Thoburn as one of the great gifts of God to this 
generation. He hoped to live to see the time when there would 
be ten thousand baptized in a single year. When I was in India 
five years ago there had been in the two years immediately pre- 
ceding thirty-two thousand baptisms. 

But what has that to do with the question? You will see in 
just another moment. When I was at that camp meeting in north- 
ern India I became acquainted with a splendid man, named 
Hasan Rasa Kahn, a tall, typical native of Hindustan, himself a 
Mohammedan, dark skinned, not like a negro, but as though 
darkness had been sifted down upon his classical features out 
of the night, a brilliant black eye, gleaming almost, a man of 
high culture and of great gifts, a man who, if he could have 
spoken the English tongue, would have been an acceptable and 
popular pastor in any church in America. That man, converted 
from Mohammedanism, became a zealous missionary at once, be- 
came a local preacher, then a circuit preacher, then a district 
preacher. There were hundreds of heathen, even thousands, con- 
verted under his ministry. He was made a presiding elder, and 
then they tried to get him away into the service of the English 
government, as secretary of a great commission, at a salary four 
times as great as he could ever get in our Church as a missionary. 
He promptly answered, "Gentlemen, I am a secretary for Jesus 
Christ, and cannot leave this higher calling." When I met him 
at this camp meeting he soberly said to me, "Bishop Foss, in my 
district, which contains about six hundred mud-hut villages, I 
can bring to baptism in twenty-four months fifty thousand per- 
sons with fair intelligence, if only the Church will provide 'hold- 
ers-up,' " as he called them ; that is to say, plain, simple pastor- 
teachers, who know how to read the New Testament and have 
the fire of God in their hearts. You can get them for thirty dol- 
lars a year. "Provide me a few hundred 'holders-up/ and I will 
bring fifty thousand people in my district to baptism in twenty- 
four months. " The white missionaries from America smiled and 
said he was very enthusiastic, and our paper, the Indian Witness, 
doubted and thus put him on his mettle. Two months later he 



WHAT RETRENCHMENT MEANS 211 

came again and said to the Annual Conference, "The doubts 
expressed about my work two months ago have led me to take a 
census, and I find out that there are fifty-five thousand persons 
ready within a short time to come to Christian baptism, if only 
you can provide 'holders-up.' " I speak of him the more freely 
because God has released him from such labors, to such a reward, 
O, such a reward, as is given where "he that winneth souls is 
wise" is the standard of judgment. 

But now, what about retrenchment, and how does it affect this ? No Advance 
That very night this man told me : "I don't dare to ask my preach- ^ lth ^ ut 
ers to bring many people to baptism; unless we can provide the 
'holders-up' we must let them alone. They wouldn't be taught, 
they wouldn't understand about Jesus as we want them to do; 
they would drift back to the old idolatry and be worse off than 
before." And the next year — O Church of God, I say it with 
burning shame — in the Conference of which he was a member 
twenty-three of these pastor-teachers, who had been employed the 
previous year, were dismissed because our India brethren could 
not, with all their economy, provide nine hundred and sixty dol- 
lars to keep them going for another year. And so what does re- 
trenchment mean? It means this, that the Methodist Church, in 
the persons of your missionaries, is lining up before this dusky 
crowd who want to forsake idolatry and come to baptism, and say- 
ing with batons raised like those of policemen: "Stand back, 
stand back ; we are not ready for you. The Church at home has 
cut off eight per cent. We don't want you." Our missionaries 
are doing that thing in your name, because — pardon me if my 
language is too intense — a laggard and reluctant Church com- 
mands it. 

I referred just now to Bishop Thoburn. In India not only our Bishop 
missionaries, but the officers of the government (who through Estimates 
him distributed five hundred tons of that precious cargo of corn 
and beans and wheat sent from San Francisco for the starving 
poor at the time of the famine in India), regard him as a veritable 
prophet in this generation. Did you hear him say to-day that he 
believes that under conditions which the Church ought to make 
practicable there may be a million Methodists gathered in India 
within three years, and ten million within his lifetime, if God shall 
spare him ? God grant to spare him for work here for other years, 
and then for Beulah land to watch the march of progress which 



212 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



New 

Missionaries 

Needed 



Methodism's 
Opportunity 



you will make possible, will you not — will you not? My heart 
misgave me a little at his great predictions to-day, but you had 
better believe him ; he has been right before. Trust every mis- 
sionary you have in India, trust every bishop who goes and looks 
over the fields and tells you that if the Church would only make 
possible the addition of twenty per cent to the missionary appro- 
priation to India this year, then twenty per cent more next year, 
and so on, that mighty works will be done. This must be done, 
in order, first of all, that we may send out American missionaries 
— grand, strong young men who shall take the places of Thoburn 
and of Parker and of Humphrey and of others who will soon go 
up to their reward — who shall be God's appointed leaders of the 
India army, and shall furnish the inspiration and the experience 
and the Methodist point of view for the India Methodist Church ; 
then we must increase the schools and colleges and give them 
endowments, and increase the number of those "holders-up" — 
trust the men who tell you that if you do these things the Church 
will grow amazingly. I seem to hear that wonderful man, Hasan 
Rasa Kahn, calling from heaven to-night to you to provide these 
"holders-up" by the thousand, to take care of the converts ready 
to come to us in India. 

I borrow for my final thought an illustration from Dr. Richard 
S. Storrs. When Donatello, the great sculptor of the figure of St. 
George on the facade of the Church of San Michele, in Flor- 
ence, had finished his work, all Florence waited for the prince of 
sculptors, Michael Angelo, to come out and look it over. At 
length he came and looked upon this new work of highest art. 
He found the pose to be perfect, the mien magnificent, the brow 
mantling with genius, the marble eye shining with light, the foot 
ready to step forth, the plastic marble turned by genius into a 
living thing; and when he had looked it over, at last he said, 
"Now, march I" It seemed ready to step down from its pedestal, 
to be a thing of life. O Church of the living God, O ye Meth- 
odists of to-day, what shall I say when I think of what Methodism 
is and of what the Church of God now is; when I think of the 
proved adaptation of Christianity to the conquest of the world, and 
of the proved adaptation of Methodism, because of its peculiar ex- 
perimental power and because of its magnificent organization, to 
do the work of God in saving men in all lands ? When I think of 
this, when I think of the resources which have multiplied in our 



213 

hands until we have wealth enough to be gathered from the 
people, not from the rich alone, nor the middle classes, but the 
poor also, to do anything that we want to do and to which the 
Spirit of the living God inspires us; and when I think that all 
this machinery and agency which God's providence and grace 
have put into our power are so nearly complete, and at any rate 
are so proved to be efficient for the work of God ; when I think 
that the eternal God still lives on the throne, and that we are living 
under the dispensation of the Holy Ghost, that the Holy Ghost is 
poured out and has transformed at least one hundred thousand 
hearts under our care in India, and is ready for the transforma- 
tion of millions more; — I feel like saying to the Methodism of 
to-day, "Now, march ! Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the 
glory of God is risen upon thee !" 



"IT TENDETH TO POVERTY " 

The Rev. J. W. Bashford, D.D. 

" See that ye abound in this grace also" 

In the whole history of Methodism the needs of the world and How Meet 
the opportunities of the Church have never been so strongly pre- the Cnsis 
sented as at this Convention. As I have been sitting here and 
listening for two days the question has begun to burn in my 
heart, "What are we going to do in the crisis?" Surely it is time 
that we make a change in the program and begin to discuss ways 
and means. If we listen longer to such thrilling presentations of 
the world's need we shall either become insane or go home hard- 
ened, as from a battle in which we paid no heed to the cries of the 
wounded. May every soul from this hour to the close of the 
Convention begin to ask himself the question, "How shall we 
meet the crisis?" In case you do not accept my answer to the 
question, perhaps the Holy Spirit will give you a better answer. 
I believe, however, that I speak after the mind of the Spirit ; and 
I pray that the Spirit may impress some solution of the problem 
upon your minds and hearts as strongly as he has impressed the 
following solution upon me. 

The chief hindrance to the speedy evangelization of the world The Chief 
is the lack of money. With the walls of nations and races fallen Hmdrance 
down on the one side, and with literally hundreds of young people 



214 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Systematic 
and 

Proportional 
Giving 



An Apostolic 
Injunction 



The Church's 
Mistake 



of culture and consecration eager to enter the field, Christians 
must either stop praying for more openings and more laborers 
for the harvest, or else they must begin giving. 

No enduring increase in our resources can be secured without 
systematic giving. The Church can never capture the world for 
Christ so long as our gifts rest upon spasmodic emotions rather 
than upon conscience. Again, our giving must be in proportion 
to our income. The whole history of the Christian Church does 
not show a single mission established or a single church main- 
tained by the pernicious appeals for each member to give one 
dollar. That cry at once lowers the standard of the wealthiest 
members to a pittance ; and the poorer members know that Christ 
does not demand that they give exactly the same amount as the 
richest member. It is entirely proper to compare our average 
contributions of some fifty cents per member with the average 
contribution of one dollar and thirty cents per member by the 
Presbyterians, and to ask for an average of one dollar per member 
from Methodists. But an assessment of one dollar per member 
is false in principle and disappointing in practice. We can hope 
for no general and permanent increase until we insist upon the 
apostolic injunction of systematic and proportional giving. "Now 
concerning the collection for the saints, as I gave order to the 
churches of Galatia, so also do ye. Upon the first day of the 
week let each one of you lay by him in store, as he may prosper." 
A study of the passage shows that it is not simply a suggestion, 
but an apostolic injunction ; that it is a general order, one which 
Paul had given to the churches of an entire province; that it 
enjoins systematic giving at regular intervals established in 
advance; that it demands proportional giving according to the 
income of each. The two principles of system and propor- 
tion clearly laid down by the apostle Paul are essential to success 
in every business enterprise; and business men recognize them 
as essential to the successful management of every Church 
enterprise. 

As I have worked and prayed over the theme assigned the 
conviction has grown upon me that, in not fixing upon some 
proportion in giving and urging that upon every member, the 
Church has made the same mistake that she would have made 
had she not fixed upon one seventh of every Christian's time, but 
had left every member free to set aside so much or so little of 



IT TENDETH TO POVERTY 21 5 

his time from business as might seem good in his own eyes. It is 
plain to all that, had not the early Christians set aside one day in 
seven for the worship and service of God, and resolutely abstained 
from their ordinary work upon that day, Christianity would never 
have become one of the great world religions. It grows equally 
clear to me that were the Christians, along with the devotion of 
one seventh of their time to the Lord, to set aside also one tenth 
of their net income for his service the world would be speedily 
evangelized. 

Dropping for a moment the definite proportion of one tenth, is the Rule 
let us plead simply for some definite proportion in giving. Every *J° . 
argument which could be used against any definite proportion in 
giving, every charge that such a rule is legal and mechanical, that 
it contradicts the whole spirit of the New Testament, has been 
used against the maintenance of the Lord's Day. And indeed 
you can find a stronger argument against the maintenance of the 
Sabbath on the ground that it contradicts the free spirit of Chris- 
tianity, and you can cite stronger arguments in both the words 
and works of Christ for the abolition of the Sabbath than for 
the abolition of tithing. In the case of the Lord's Day you ask 
every Christian, no matter how poor he is, no matter how large 
his family, to abstain from his ordinary employment one day in 
seven and devote the time to the worship and service of God. The 
demand for the same amount of time from every Christian, what- 
ever his condition, is more mechanical and legal than the demand 
for a proportion of his earnings. In time the poor man sets aside 
the same amount as the rich man. Proportional giving may not 
take one fiftieth as much money from the poor man as from the 
rich man. But every man recognizes that the observance of the Observance 
Lord's Day, with proper exceptions for the works of mercy and J a J b * tll 
of necessity, and the whole of it observed in accordance with the 
Master's injunction that the Sabbath was made for man, not man 
for the Sabbath — every man recognizes that the Lord's Day so 
observed has brought infinite gains to our civilization. Who 
doubts that an equally universal observance of proportional giv- 
ing, not in a mechanical or legal manner, not with the conception 
that one tenth or any proportion discharges our obligation to 
God, but as a recognition that we have been redeemed by the life- 
blood of Jesus, and that all we have and are belong to him — who 
doubts that such proportional giving would prove an infinite 



2l6 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



What the 
Proportion 
Should Be 



Old 

Testament 
Standard 



gain to the Church and to the civilization of the twentieth 
century? Let us at least resolve here to-day that we will begin 
ourselves at once, and that we will lead every member of the 
Church over whom we have sufficient influence to systematic 
giving of some proportion of his income for the service of the 
Lord. 

What ought this proportion to be? How much of his net 
income ought the Church to ask every member to set aside for 
all religious and benevolent causes ? I do not wish to lay down a 
hard and fast mechanical rule which does violence to the spirit 
of the Master. Certainly the same liberal exceptions on the 
ground of mercy and necessity should be made as obtain in the 
observance of the Lord's Day. With such liberal exceptions 
according to the spirit of the Master, I believe that the gifts under 
the new dispensation of the followers of Him who gave the last 
full measure of his life for us ought not to fall below the gifts 
under the old dispensation — that the Christian should not be 
stingier than the Jew. 

A careful reading of Lev. xxvii, 30-32, Deut. xii, 5-1 1, 28, and 
xiv, 22-29 will convince any person that tithing has the sanction 
of the Old Testament: "And all the tithe of the land, whether 
of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord's." 
"Ye shall not do after all the things that we do here this day, 
every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes." What an exact 
description of our present method! "But when ye go over 
Jordan, and dwell in the land which the Lord your God causeth 
you to inherit, . . . thither shall ye bring all that I command 
you ; your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, your tithes. . . . 
Observe and hear all these words which I command thee, that it 
may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee forever." 
"Thou shalt surely tithe all the increase of thy seed, . . . and 
the firstlings of thy herd and of thy flock ; that thou mayest learn 
to fear the Lord thy God always. . . . Thou shalt bring forth 
all the tithe of thine increase, . . . and the Levite, because he 
hath no portion nor inheritance with thee, and the stranger, and 
the fatherless, and the widow, which are within thy gates, shall 
come, and shall eat and be satisfied ; that the Lord thy God may 
bless thee in all the work of thine hand which thou doest." From 
such passages as the above it seems clear that the Old Testament 
indorses the principle of setting aside one tenth for the specific 



IT TENDETH TO POVERTY 21 J 

support of the Church, and provides for additional offerings 
according to the means and the spirit of the worshiper. 

The Jewish priests carried the exactions of the tithe so far as Jewish 
to include mint, anise, and cumin — mere condiments of food like In818tence 
our salt and pepper. They insisted upon their tithes, and neg- 
lected the weightier matters of judgment, mercy, and faith. Jesus, 
as the real leader of all reforms, laid emphasis, of course, upon 
great principles, like mercy, judgment, and faith — "These ye 
ought to have done." But, unlike many reformers, Jesus was 
never careless as to details. He knew that the mastery of great 
principles manifests itself in faithfulness in little things. Hence 
he adds, in regard to the application of the tithe to the mere con- 
diments of the table, "and not to have left the other undone." It 
is difficult to find a stronger approval of the principle of tithing 
than these words afford. We are sure that we speak after both 
the letter and the spirit of the New Testament in urging system- 
atic and proportional giving. We believe that we speak after the 
mind of Christ in suggesting that in general the Christian should 
set aside for the service of God and man not less than one tenth At Least 
of his income. Just here we are met by the suggestion that an 
Old Testament system of tithing is not adapted to our modern 
and complex age; that it is very difficult for many men to 
determine what is their net income after paying the legitimate 
expenses necessary to obtain their income ; where the line is to 
be drawn between the relatives who have a legitimate — almost a 
legal — claim upon them, and humanity in general. A moment's 
thought will suffice to show that this objection is not against 
tithing, but against all proportional giving; that it is a plea for 
the old lack of system which has left the Church with an empty 
treasury in face of the greatest opportunity of the ages — a plea 
for the lack of system which has been one of the most fruitful 
sources of failure in the business world. However much effort 
may be required to ascertain the facts, the exact knowledge of 
one's income and expenditure and of his financial condition is one 
of the deepest needs of Christians, not only on religious, but on 
financial grounds. 

A more serious objection is presented in the interest of the poor. Demands 
I have been asked many times whether I think it Christlike to jj^J|! tlie 
demand that a poor man with a family of ten children and an 
income of six hundred dollars a year give as much as a single 



2l8 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Church 
Finances 



What the 
Church's 
Tithe 
Would Do 



man with an equal income and no relatives depending upon him. 
The answer is fourfold : ( I ) The law of necessity upon the part 
of the poor man and of mercy upon the part of the Church may 
well absolve some persons from tithing. (2) If the poor give 
ten per cent, or even two per cent, many a rich man is called to 
give more than ten per cent. (3) "The submerged tenth" in any 
Church never remains submerged. It usually rises into the com- 
fortable and often into the wealthier class in a few years; and 
the Church can well afford and is willing to wait for the poorest 
to escape from their distress before urging them to give to any 
considerable extent. (4) I have never known the real difficulty 
to be presented by a poor family in any concrete case in the history 
of tithing. The poor are not the people who rebel against tithing, 
when tithing is presented with the freedom of Christ and in his 
spirit. It is the rich and the comfortable who refuse to give, in 
the name of the poor. 

I believe that the struggle to bring our Church up to giving 
even so large a proportion as one tenth is not so difficult, and that 
the end is not so far removed as our fears may indicate. The 
bishops in their last address estimated the income of the members 
of our Church at five hundred millions of dollars per year. 
Bishop McCabe claimed that a few years ago the total gifts of the 
members of our Church for all Church and benevolent purposes 
reached twenty-three millions of dollars a year. If we add the 
gifts of our people for the welfare of humanity, and accordingly 
for the advancement of the kingdom, but outside of all Church 
tabulation, our gifts certainly equal twenty-five millions of dollars 
annually, or an average of five per cent of our income. If every 
member of our Church whom the pastor and official board know 
to be able to pay the amount could be brought to a subscription of 
ten per cent of his income, those who would go beyond ten per 
cent would bring the average up far beyond fifty millions dollars 
a year. Surely it is not an impossible task to lead the great 
majority of our members to fix upon some proportion of their 
income as a payment to the Lord who has redeemed them, and 
thus to bring our Church as a whole to compliance with the 
apostolic injunction of systematic and proportional giving. If 
we can bring the great majority of God's children who know 
Christ as Saviour and Lord to a regular offering of substantially 
ten per cent of their income during the next five years, before 



IT TENDETH TO POVERTY 2 1 9 

the close of this generation we can give every child of God at 
least the invitation to come home. The more I study the New 
Testament the more fully it seems to me that the divine injunc- 
tion of proportional giving and the New Testament sanction for 
setting aside one tenth of our income for the service of God and 
humanity is as strong as is the divine injunction to set aside one 
seventh of our time for the same purpose. In a word, the loose 
theory of grace, that spirit of antinomianism which has infected 
Protestant Christianity and led us to magnify emotional states 
and neglect the consecration of the will, accounts for the present 
crisis in missions. We have treated giving so fully as a matter 
of impulse rather than of duty that Christians generally repudiate 
the claim of God and the Church upon any fixed per cent of their 
income. Our giving is not systematic and in proportion to our 
receipts, but spasmodic and according to our impulses. 

We cannot adopt a false principle in religion without the Business 
poison of it affecting our careers in business. Accordingly, our Pnncl P les 
self-centered and unsystematic use of funds for God runs in a 
measure throughout our acquisitions and more fully throughout 
our expenditures, and thus weakens the financial standing of 
millions of Christians. It is said that ninety-five per cent of 
men in business fail at some stage of their career. I have never 
succeeded in finding the data upon which this statement is based. 
I do not believe it to be true. Possibly ninety-five per cent of our 
business men change their business or their methods of business 
during their lifetime, thus indicating that in their judgment there 
was need and opportunity for improvement. If it were said that 
ninety-five per cent of business men fail to make an adequate 
success in business, that they fail to measure up to their possibili- 
ties, everybody would accept the statement as true. 

Financial failures are due to carelessness and laziness or to Financial 
greed and speculation in making money, or else to carelessness ai ures 
and extravagance in spending it. But the adoption of system 
and self-denial in the use of money will do much to promote 
system and devotion to daily duties in making money. The same 
conscientiousness which leads a young man to set aside a tenth 
of his income for the Lord in spending his money, that same 
conscientiousness will keep him from trying to make money 
through speculation and cheating — fruitful sources of financial 
failure. But more Americans fail through carelessness and 



220 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Self-denial 



The Margin 
the Key to 
Fortunes 



Tithing for 
Selfish Ends 



extravagance in spending money than through dishonesty in 
making it. Their expenditures do not seem to themselves ex- 
travagant ; but they are out of proportion to their income. All 
business men know that the foundations of fortunes are laid not 
so frequently or so fully through large earnings as through self- 
denial in spending money, through preserving a reasonable and 
constant margin between income and expenditure. Now tithing 
demands systematic, constant self-denial. It is an almost unfail- 
ing cure of extravagant or disproportionate expenditure. The 
young man who conscientiously sets aside for some good cause 
one tenth of his earnings will conscientiously use the remaining 
nine tenths; and nine tenths conscientiously used will contribute 
vastly more to one's enrichment than ten tenths used in a hap- 
hazard, self-indulgent manner. So surely, therefore, as a young 
man refuses to deny himself and set aside a proportion of his 
income for benevolent purposes, so surely is he laying the foun- 
dation of carelessness, of self-indulgence and extravagance, and 
making improbable the accumulation of a fortune. 

The margin is the key to fortunes. The growth of a fortune 
depends not upon one's earnings, nor his expenditures alone, but 
upon the preservation of the margin between the two. Tithing 
teaches the doctrine of the margin, and inaugurates it in the life 
of every tither. Nine tenths in the hands of the man who has 
learned the doctrine of the margin are more than ten tenths in 
the hands of the same man before he has learned obedience to 
that law. 

One can practice self-denial and system sufficiently to set 
aside a tithe and then keep it for himself. In case this man does 
not become greedy and overreach himself in his haste to be rich, 
he will reap the external reward of the tither. But he will miss 
the spiritual blessings. It is possible to accumulate money by 
observing the first half of the principle of tithing, namely, the 
doctrine of the margin. But the first half makes a rich-poor man. 
I know an aged couple who by forty years of business skill and 
self-denial accumulated more than a million dollars. They longed 
to enjoy what they supposed their rich neighbors enjoyed. They 
built one of the finest houses on the avenue in the city, or rather 
hired an architect to build it. They found the mansion a prison ; 
and the only part of it which seemed at all like home was the 
kitchen, and they lived there. They felt some slight stirrings of 



221 

artistic taste, and they longed to have fine paintings on their 
walls like those of their new neighbors. Walking down the 
street one day — for they did not enjoy their carriage — they saw 
a lithograph which greatly pleased them. The old man was 
ashamed to display his ignorance by asking its price. He had Rich, not 
heard that good paintings cost from three hundred to five hundred ea y 
dollars, and he knew this was very pretty. So with difficulty he 
wrote out his check and handed it to the clerk and asked to have 
a thousand dollars' worth of such pictures sent to his new home. 
He hoped he might receive two or possibly three of the pictures ; 
and was greatly astonished when a wagonload of lithographs 
was delivered at his home. You smile ; but that aged millionaire 
and his wife were pitiably poor. It is possible to be rich in this 
world's goods and not rich toward God. There are Methodist 
millionaires who throughout eternity will be poorer than the 
children of the almshouses. The cure for self-indulgence and 
extravagance and poverty on the one side and for greed and 
spiritual poverty on the other side is found in partnership with 
God carried on through proportional giving. "See that ye 
abound in this grace also." 

Above all, there is a divine providence in human affairs. God Divine 
is determined that every one of his children shall at least have 
the invitation to come home. But he cannot carry forward the 
great evangelistic, ecclesiastical, and educational enterprises nec- 
essary for the redemption of our race without immense sums of 
money. Hence he not only calls ministers and missionaries to 
peculiar tasks, but he calls all his children to fellowship and 
partnership with himself. We are all God's stewards, and each 
one must give an account of his stewardship. If we are faithful 
to the five talents committed to our care we shall find them becom- 
ing ten. God wants men whom he can trust to use wealth for 
the kingdom, and he pours money into every such man's lap, 
unless he desires to use that man for some service even higher 
than faithful stewardship in the use of money. 

Many years ago a poor widow told her sons that they must a Widow's 
learn to be generous, else they would become men of mean and Ins t™ction 
little spirits. She enforced her teaching by putting into the hands 
of each child every Sunday morning a small amount of money 
for the support of the Gospel. Soon the children began to make 
the contribution from their own earnings. The mother's teaching 



222 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A Hundred- 
fold 



Only Method 
of Relief 



was so impressed upon one son that he early determined to keep 
count of his contributions and to give a thousand dollars to the 
Lord in order that he might overcome the mean and stingy spirit 
which his mother had described and which he believed possessed 
him. The amount was twice as much as the mother and all the 
children were worth. The mother was surprised and gratified 
at the son's announcement of his purpose ; but she did not expect 
that he would ever be able to carry it out. The resolution cost 
years of effort. But that son astonished and delighted his mother 
before her death by bringing to her his accounts, showing that 
he had paid a thousand dollars into the Lord's treasury. The 
industry and self-denial and system developed by this struggle 
became, with the blessing of God, the foundation of a successful 
business career. This man completed, two years ago, the larger 
but not more difficult task of raising his gift of a thousand dol- 
lars to the Lord to one hundred thousand dollars. By his life 
and gifts probably he has done more for the Church and the 
kingdom in the city where he lives than any minister who has 
served that city during his lifetime. How blessed is such a 
partnership with God! Upon the other hand, a brother of this 
man, who would not learn self-denial and thus become rich toward 
God, has become so reduced financially by his vices that for 
fifteen years he has been a pensioner on his more generous 
brother. The devil is a poor paymaster. You can multiply by 
the score cases similar to the above. You all know people who 
have been ruined by their extravagance. It is indeed possible 
that a few unsystematic, impulsive givers have occasionally sub- 
scribed too much for church enterprises. But you cannot name 
one systematic, conscientious tither who, by his own testimony, 
or in your own calm judgment, has suffered permanent financial 
loss by tithing. The Jews are the only people who through 
systematic, voluntary gifts have ever approached the tithe; they 
furnish fewer candidates for the almshouse than any other people, 
and they are confessedly the most successful people financially 
on earth. Here is the scientific test of experiment. Nine tenths 
plus God are more than ten tenths without him. 

The crisis is upon us. The twentieth century has dawned. The 
nations are at our doors, and needing help. God is hovering over 
us. Tithing, or at least proportional giving, is one method of 
relief, and, so far as I can see, the only way out. You cannot 



WHAT THE PRESIDING ELDER CAN DO 223 

maintain the New Testament example of the devotion of one 
seventh of one's time to the service and worship of God and deny 
the New Testament injunction and example of systematic and 
proportional gifts for the worship and service of God. "Bring 
ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in 
mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, 
if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a 
blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." 



WHAT THE PRESIDING ELDER CAN DO 

The Rev. Willard T. Perrin, D.D.* 

What the presiding elder can do depends upon what he is. The 
He cannot do what a presiding elder ought to do unless he is full Eide^as^a 
of faith and of the Holy Ghost and in sympathy with the purpose Man 
of the Son of God that his Gospel shall reach the last man. The 
success of the presiding elder upon his district will very likely 
be the outcome of some closet experiences with his Lord; some 
overwhelming revelation of responsibility and need ; some 
mountain-top vision of the omnipotence of his glorified Saviour; 
some blessed baptism of the Spirit, melting his soul with grateful 
love to the Crucified One and pitiful love for the blood-bought 
who know not their Redeemer. 

The presiding elder, for highest efficiency in this work, must be A Student of 
an intelligent student of missions, particularly of modern mis- Mlssions 
sions, and especially of the missions of our Methodism, and there- 
fore deeply impressed with their importance as an essential part 
of the work of Christ's Church. He ought to be a reader of 
missionary literature, including the current periodicals; in fel- 
lowship with living missionaries ; and thus posted as to what 
the living God is doing in this very year of our Lord. 

He must be enthusiastic, stirred by inspiring conceptions of Enthusiasm 
God's loving purpose to save the world, of the race-wide opera- 
tions of God's Spirit upon human hearts, and of the ultimate 
triumph which beckons onward the followers of the conquering 
Christ. The enthusiastic presiding elder has his eye on nothing 

* Some one hundred and twenty presiding elders and other leaders of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church and of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, helped me in the prep- 
aration of this paper. They will please accept my sincere thanks.— W. T. P. 



224 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Honorable 
Leadership 



A Leader of 
Leaders 



The Sunday 
School Super- 
intendent 



less than world-conquest for the King. He therefore seeks the 
salvation of souls everywhere and victory everywhere for the 
principles of the Gospel. His main object is to gain souls rather 
than dollars. He seeks to meet the apportionments, but rather 
to train the people to give what they ought. He may rejoice over 
what has been done, but he is eager for what ought to be done. 
He devotes himself not to a spurt, but to a persistent effort to 
bring the members of Christ's Church to such a systematic setting 
apart of their income and of their possessions for the extension 
of Christ's kingdom as will win the approval of Him who was 
rich but for our sakes became poor. He is on the outlook for 
those who will give not their money merely, but themselves, or 
what perhaps costs them more, their sons and daughters, to this 
holy cause. 

The presiding elder is called to honorable leadership. The 
office is maintained at large cost. Among other voices the call of 
missions challenges him to do his best. To quote another, "To 
be a poor presiding elder is the most inexcusable of economic 
sins." 

In discussing my theme I propose to consider what the presid- 
ing elder can do, (i) officially and (2) indirectly. 

1. Officially. 

In the Quarterly Conference the presiding elder meets the 
leaders of the local church. This is his opportunity to lead the 
leaders. He may do much to stimulate the pastor in the latter's 
double duty of spreading missionary intelligence and of collecting 
money. In the presence of the members of the Conference he can 
strengthen the pastor in his purpose to do his utmost for missions 
and can talk over the best methods. He can urge him to make 
a great day of Missionary Sunday and to see that the missionary 
committee solicits a subscription from every member of the 
church. He can emphasize the value of the monthly missionary 
prayer meeting and suggest how to make it interesting and 
profitable. 

Here the presiding elder meets the Sunday school superintend- 
ent, who may be an ardent friend of missions, or possibly a nar- 
row-minded opponent of the monthly missionary collection. If 
the former the presiding elder may bring him encouragement. If 
he be the latter the pastor will very likely be grateful to the elder 
if he speak with authority as to the Disciplinary provision for the 



WHAT THE PRESIDING ELDER CAN DO 225 

organization of the Sunday school missionary society and lay 
before the Conference the importance of training the boys and 
girls in systematic benevolence, and the great possibilities in the 
Sunday school for enthusiasm and achievement with reference to 
the missionary enterprise. 

Here he may talk with the Epworth League president about The Epworth 
the growing interest in missions among the young people of all £ ea S" e 
denominations ; call attention to the spreading Student Volunteer 
and Student Missionary Campaign movements, laying stress 
upon the value of systematic giving on the part of the youth; 
urge the appointment of a missionary committee, the purchase of 
the Missionary Campaign Libraries, the organization of mission 
study classes, the promotion of the Christian Stewardship En- 
rollment, and a missionary contribution from every Epworth 
Leaguer. 

Here he meets the financial leaders of the society, those upon The Stewards 
whom falls the responsibility of providing for the current ex- 
penses. Often these men, oppressed with their local burdens, 
look with envious eyes upon the money given for foreign missions 
and outside benevolences. The presiding elder may take occasion 
by argument and illustration to refute the mistaken notion that 
gifts to other worthy objects rob the home treasury. 

Here the presiding elder ought to meet the presidents of the The Women's 
Woman's Foreign Missionary Society and the Woman's Home Societies 
Missionary Society. The next General Conference will make 
this possible, I trust. But he may possibly meet representatives 
of these organizations, and at all events he may speak kindly of 
these splendid societies, prompt the brethren to profit by such 
inspiring examples of intelligent activity, and counsel the most 
harmonious cooperation between the various missionary societies 
of the Church. 

At the first Quarterly Conference the presiding elder may a Missionary 
wisely advise the early taking of the subscriptions for missions, Sermon 
and at his second visit will probably not make a mistake if he 
takes along a carefully prepared missionary sermon. He will 
not be likely to make too much of the Quarterly Conference as a 
missionary opportunity, and ought to secure, if possible, a full 
attendance of the members. A Quarterly Conference with open 
doors, to which all the members of the church were invited and 
at which light refreshments added to the fellowship, has been 
15 



226 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The District 

Missionary 

Secretary 



Program 
Topics 



Missionary 

Institutes 



Available 
Speakers 



found a most favorable occasion for the elder to magnify the 
benevolences. 

In his oversight of the district the presiding elder will find 
ample scope for effective service to the missionary cause. The 
Discipline furnishes him a counselor and coworker in the district 
missionary secretary. The arrangement is admirable. The pre- 
siding elder and secretary should early get together and plan 
carefully. The more responsibility the presiding elder can put 
upon the secretary the better, provided he be the enthusiastic 
friend of missions he ought to be. In some districts a missionary 
campaign committee has been found very useful. 

Meetings. Much can be done by securing a place for mission- 
ary topics on the programs of meetings regularly held which are 
not specifically missionary. The District Conference would not 
be complete without such a feature in its sessions. More might 
be profitably made of the annual meeting of the district stewards. 
The camp meetings, preachers' meetings, Epworth League dis- 
trict and circuit meetings, and Sunday school conventions all 
gather the people together under such auspices that a missionary 
topic is peculiarly in place and will usually be most acceptable if 
it be not unreasonably crowded upon the management of these 
meetings. 

But it is important and sometimes absolutely essential that 
specific missionary meetings be held. Our brethren of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church, South, have made much of their mission- 
ary institutes where preachers and laymen — particularly the 
preachers — have caught inspiration and have banded themselves 
together to win in the name of the Master. The presiding elder's 
district has often been divided into subdistricts upon which group 
meetings have been held. This method has been advantageously 
worked in connection with our wide-awake field secretaries. 
Finally a great missionary day in every charge should be the 
goal to bring the cause home to every member of every church. 

In these meetings all available talent should be utilized. As 
a rule, the most effective are, doubtless, those who have personally 
inspected the fields — the returned missionaries, the missionary 
bishops, and the bishops who have visited the missions. The 
missionary secretaries and the field secretaries are in great de- 
mand and full of magnetic power. But it is important that others 
be enlisted, and appointed to study different phases of the vast 



WHAT THE PRESIDING ELDER CAN DO 227 

and varied work of bringing this world to the feet of Jesus 
Christ, and thus be thrilled by their own investigations and their 
own thinking. A place upon some program should be found, if 
possible, for every pastor, and gifted laymen should be pressed 
into the service. The presiding elder is in a peculiarly favorable 
position, with the aid of the district secretary, to bring about these 
most desirable results and thus arouse in as many pastors and 
laymen as possible the sense of responsibility. He may render 
valuable service in promoting exchanges among the ministers, so 
that experienced and effective missionary preachers may come 
to the aid of their younger brethren and of those in difficult fields. 

Literature. Ignorance is the mighty foe of the missionary Supply 
cause. No intelligent Christian can fail to be interested in the Information 
salvation of all lands. "Give the people the facts," exclaims one 
successful presiding elder. "Flood the churches with literature,'* 
writes another. "Something like one thousand books were sold," 
is another's explanation in part how they raised the entire appor- 
tionment on his district. This fortress of ignorance we must 
assault with all our available forces. A copy of the regular 
Methodist weekly — Z ion's Herald or a Christian Advocate — and 
the Epworth Herald ought to be in the home of at least every 
office bearer in the Church. This would be a great advance. The 
World-Wide Missions is wisely scattered widely. The mission- 
ary reports and the missionary monthly or review furnish effective 
ammunition. A quarterly bulletin has been issued by some pre- 
siding elders, and others have found a district paper invaluable. 
One prepared a chart which vividly pictured the fidelity of some 
churches and the striking failure of others. I am expecting much 
from the excellent Campaign Libraries published by our Book 
Concern at such reasonable rates. Timely and readable tracts are 
constantly coming from the missionary office, while the publica- 
tions of our two women's missionary societies are unsurpassed. 
But all these are of small avail unless they secure readers, and the 
presiding elder's business is to aid in the circulation of this litera- 
ture. A lantern slide bureau has been formed by at least one 
presiding elder and suggests possibilities worth considering. No 
literature is more likely to produce results than the presiding 
elder's personal letters written out of a burning heart. "Much 
correspondence" tells the story of one victory. 

"The Station Plan." The presiding elder might be, it seems 



228 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Living 
Link 



Equitable 
Apportion- 
ments 



to me, an important factor in bringing local churches, Sunday 
schools, and Epworth Leagues into correspondence with indi- 
vidual missionaries, native pastors, and orphan boys and girls in 
the mission schools. This gives a definiteness to appeals for 
money, enlists sympathies, and awakens desires for information, 
which could not otherwise be stirred. No other method, I am 
satisfied, can be so effectual. This will naturally lead to the sup- 
port of missionaries by individual churches or groups of churches, 
or by groups of Sunday schools and Epworth Leagues, or even 
by individual persons of means. The Station Plan — "the newest 
thing in missions" — may need modification, but to my mind is 
one of the most promising things in recent developments. Our 
Church, so far as I know, is far behind other denominations in 
this advance movement. Of the seven hundred and fifty mission- 
aries of the Presbyterian Church of the United States, about five 
hundred and fifty are supported in the way I have indicated, 
while the Congregational Churches are in the very van. The 
results have sometimes been marvelous. The first Presbyterian 
Church of Wichita, Kansas, now supports three or four foreign 
missionaries and some thirty native pastors. It began this when 
overwhelmed with financial obligations at home. This policy of 
direct support through the agency of the Missionary Society 
will, I am convinced, incalculably increase the missionary 
offerings. 

Apportionments. With the apportionments sent out from the 
New York office the presiding elder has a vital connection. He 
is expected to indorse them and make an appeal that they be 
fully met. Under these conditions I am constrained to suggest 
that the office in New York will be wise if it be even more inclined 
to regard the judgment of the presiding elder, who is acquainted 
with local conditions as no person in a distant office can possibly 
be. This system of equitable apportionment I believe to be very 
helpful, and should be effectively utilized by the presiding elders. 
I have read with interest how the last year seventy districts of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, raised the full apportion- 
ment for missions, or "paid out," as they call it. The enthusiasm 
was often so great to secure the whole amount that at the round- 
up at Conference some one or more earnest laymen or perhaps 
the preachers of the district have come to the rescue. I am not 
sure that our present method of always advancing the goal would 



WHAT THE PRESIDING ELDER CAN DO 229 

ever permit a presiding elder of our Church to reach it. We do, 
however, have the stimulus of possibly bringing all our charges 
into Class First. 

In discussing the official influence of the presiding elder I 
ought not to omit his advice in the bishop's cabinet when appoint- 
ments are under consideration. A preacher's fidelity in raising 
the missionary and other apportionments ought to have its full 
weight in the question of the preacher's effectiveness. 

2. What the Presiding Elder Can Do Indirectly. 

The personality of the presiding elder will count for much. The Presiding 
By example he can preach most loudly. If he appears more E Xamp i e 
anxious to get his pay from the churches than to secure good 
missionary collections his appeals for the latter will fall flat. His 
own contributions should be liberal. Sometimes he can greatly 
cheer a hard-working pastor by placing his annual gift to mis- 
sions, or a part of it, with the collection of such a brother. 

He has a fine opportunity when entertained at the parsonage Fruitful 
or at the home of some official layman. The conversation awaits conversation 
his direction. What more fascinating and elevating theme than 
the progress of the kingdom of God ! If he be ready with some 
incident in the eventful life of David Livingstone or of William 
Taylor, or something fresh from the Philippines or Porto Rico 
or China or elsewhere, he will not fail to obtain an attentive 
hearing. In this way he may win some boy or girl for the foreign 
field or some princely giver for the days to come. Ministers and 
laymen he is constantly meeting in their homes, on the cars, at 
various assemblies, and if he be thoroughly aroused for the 
world's redemption he will all the while be unconsciously spread- 
ing the holy fire. 

Leadership designates the high position to which the presiding 
elder is called, and in no other line ought his leadership be more 
impressively felt than in the missionary cause. 

The presiding elders are agreed, I find, that the pastor is the The Key- 
key to this problem of the missionary collection, and that the *° *** 
indifference and negligence of too many pastors furnish the 
greatest obstacles in the way of success. Now, the presiding elder 
is the pastor of the pastors, and if the pastor be the key to the 
situation it is the province of the presiding elder to turn the key 
and thus open wide the door. "Keep looking after the pastors," 
"Stimulate the pastors/' "Coach the pastors," are some of the 



230 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Methodism's 
High Ideals 



Giving 
Does not 
Impoverish 



A Revival 



suggestions received. All this, however, can be done successfully 
only by the presiding elder who has won his pastors by his 
brotherliness and tactfulness. Get under the load beside your 
pastors, commend them, spur them on, help them all possible, 
and then trust them. Do not insist upon any ironclad method. 
The main thing is to arouse your men to do their best and then 
let them do it in their own way. A presiding elder writes of a 
victorious year on his district : "Nearly all the pastors started 
out with a determination to raise all the collections in full. All 
who formed this determination early in the year succeeded." 

The leadership of the presiding elder is felt in the sentiments 
for which he stands. Dr. Daniel Steele says that he has a span 
of hobbies — perfect love and missions. These spirited steeds 
drive well together. That presiding elder will be likely to do best 
for missions who holds up the high ideals of Christian experience 
and life for which Methodism has ever stood. Those who pro- 
foundly realize and joyfully confess that they are not their own 
Avill be most ready to give liberally for what lies nearest the heart 
of Him who bought them with his blood. 

If the presiding elder preaches and practices tithing as a mini- 
mum rule for the Christian disciple he will be lifting most of 
those whom he influences to a higher level than they have ever 
reached. There is little danger of falling into Judaistic legalism 
if this matter be rightly presented. 

Let the presiding elder everywhere banish the pernicious doc- 
trine that giving impoverishes either God or man. Churches die 
from penuriousness, and not from too generous giving. Listen 
to some testimonies from districts where strenuous and successful 
efforts were made for the missionary collection : "Other collec- 
tions have increased rapidly;" "Every pastor received every cent 
of his salary;" "The pastors received an increase of twenty-five 
per cent on their salaries;" "We are convinced that nothing so 
helps our work at home as a settled, steady purpose to do our 
full duty for the work abroad." 

A blessed revival in which sinners are converted, backsliders 
reclaimed, and believers quickened is the missionary collection's 
best friend. The presiding elder is planning well for missions 
who bends his energies to starting the fires of revival all over his 
district. No wonder that one such presiding elder reported that 
the assessment for missions and all the other Conference assess- 



WHAT THE PRESIDING ELDER CAN DO 2^1 

ments were overpaid. Not by might nor by power, but by the 
spirit of the Lord, is the missionary apportionment raised. 

The presiding elder is to rally the forces of his district in a Worth of a 
connectional unity to the support of all the enterprises of the Watchword 
Church. Mottoes and watchwords will sometimes be helpful. 
"A revival on every charge and all collections in full" isn't a bad 
one. "One hundred cents on the dollar for every claim," "A 
contribution from every member," are others. "As many dollars 
for missions as members," would be peculiarly fitting in some of 
our districts. Others equally good or better are likely to occur to 
a live leader. District enthusiasm may be a mighty force to swing 
the churches into line. 

The campaign upon the district will probably be the outcome 
of the presiding elder's resolve or that of the pastors. "Great 
determination came upon us at the missionary institute," writes a 
presiding elder as he describes a mighty baptism which fell upon 
the preachers. "The purpose to succeed, together with constant 
work, was the cause of our success," writes another. 

And so we get back to the place where we started. In our The Secret 
closet with our omnipotent living Lord is the place to win the 
victory. The size of the victory which Joash is to gain over the 
Syrians is determined in the chamber of Elisha the prophet of 
Jehovah. Let Joash smite the ground but thrice and he will win 
but a partial victory. Let him smite with his whole soul and he 
will consume his enemies altogether. The presiding elder stands 
in the presence of Jesus Christ his Lord and Saviour. He listens 
to the thrilling command, "Go ye into all the world, and preach 
the Gospel to every creature." Let him then and there commit 
himself to do his best and the victory on his district shall be 
glorious. 



2$2 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Seventy-two 
Cents a 
Member 



What Other 

Churches 

Give 



Work of the 

District 

Secretary 



WHAT THE DISTRICT MISSIONARY 
SECRETARY CAN DO 

The Rev. W. F. Oldham, D.D. 

Before I enter upon the specific subject before me, I may be 
permitted to inquire the necessity for any emphasis on the 
methods of creating added sentiment and securing added gifts 
for the Missionary Society. There are those who think that mis- 
sionary matters are already pressed to the limit in the Church, 
and that we are in danger of overdoing this. A little inquiry 
will clear the air. What is the actual missionary output of the 
Church in dollars? I take last year's figures, as they are the 
latest available. A membership of about 2,750,000 gave to the 
Missionary Society $1,300,000; through the Woman's Foreign 
Missionary Society, $410,000; through the Woman's Home Mis- 
sionary Society, $250,000; total, $1,960,000 — an average of J2 
cents per member. 

During the same year the Presbyterians gave $1.30 per member. 
The Baptists, who are certainly no better placed in life than we, 
gave 78 cents per member. Across the line the Canadian Metho- 
dists average 88 cents a member for the Missionary Society alone. 
Even if we anticipate this year's splendid advance at about $100,- 
000 it will still leave us averaging for the Missionary Society a 
little less than 50 cents per member. The Canadian Methodists 
average 88 cents. Our brethren of the North are no more pious 
nor devoted than we ; they are certainly no more wealthy ; and 
they have a wider and as needy a home missionary frontier. It 
is evident that there is a wide margin of possibility before us in 
the cultivation of our field for large returns. The standard for 
us to raise at this Convention and for the Church to realize at an 
early day is "a dollar per member" for the Missionary Society. 
Several of our German and Scandinavian districts are doing this ; 
twenty years ago the Baltimore, New York, New York East, and 
Philadelphia Conferences were doing this; and this year the 
Huron District (South Dakota Conference) and the Southern 
California Conference average $1.30 a member. 

What some Conferences used to do and others are doing we 
may hope to have all do when adequate means are used for the 
awakening of our entire membership. One of the offices designed 



THE DISTRICT MISSIONARY SECRETARY 233 

to help in this wider awakening is that of the district missionary 
secretary, and the purpose of this paper is to answer the question, 
"What can the district missionary secretary do?" The office is 
new, the path almost untrodden; several hundred eager men, 
however, have been elected district missionary secretaries. They ' 
do not desire a perfunctory office. The fact of their selection 
proves they have already demonstrated unusual interest in mis- 
sions. A vision of the abysmal needs of a Christless world they 
have seen; the cry of the hunger-smitten soul of humanity is in 
their ears. They are eager to serve. What can any of them do 
to promote the cause of missions ? 

The district secretary is to be the presiding elder's lieutenant in The Presiding 
this matter of the districts in helping his fellow-pastors and the t^ 6 *' 8 
churches they serve in three valuable ways which may be summed 
up as follows : ( i ) Increase missionary intelligence, and thereby 
deepen sincere missionary interest and devotion. (2) Further 
the loyalty of the churches of the district to the Missionary 
Society and its administration, and thus help to increase the 
regular missionary collection. (3) Furnish plans and sugges- 
tions whereby both these objects may be attained. In order to do 
these three things he must — 

1. Prepare himself for missionary leadership. In the older day Preparing for 
the king was he who had in him the "Can-ning," to-day it is he ea ers ip 
who has the "Ken-ning;" not strength of body nor material 

ability, but the strength of sanctified knowledge and devotion. 
Let the district secretary steep himself in the literature of mis- 
sions and become something of a missionary expert. A dozen 
selected volumes closely read, prayerfully pondered, will give in- 
creasing vision. This must be followed by careful current study 
of the manuscripts and debates which appear every week. Many 
pastors have never taken time to think, to pray, with something 
of agony to feel their way to the heart of missions. The district 
missionary secretary must do this until he knows himself to be 
in inner companionship with Jesus as he contemplates the un- 
gospeled world and bows over it in compassion. Thus inwardly 
furnished and prepared for his work the district secretary must 
be careful to — 

2. Keep in touch with the presiding elder. In our economy Cooperation 
the real bishops for fifty-one weeks in the year are the presiding 

elders, and the district missionary secretary must always remem- 



234 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Study of the 
District 



Spreading of 
Information 



Missionary 
Experts 



ber that he is the elder's secretary in missionary matters, and be 
careful therefore to consult the elder and secure his consent and 
cooperation for every proposed plan. 

3. Be willing to assume the initiative. That is, while he will 
do nothing without the consent and counsel of the elder he will 
remember that the elder has many interests to care for besides 
missions. He must therefore not wait for suggestions, but study 
his district and devise missionary plans suitable for its special 
circumstances when used with the elder's backing. He will find 
that the Disciplinary plans already provided are the outcome of 
years of experience and profound thought; but these provisions 
must be worked out variously, and this will call for constant and 
close attention. 

4. Seek to sow the district with missionary literature. All the 
people cannot go to our conventions, but all can read, and do 
read when selected matter is put into their hands, a little at a time, 
with a word from the pastor. Let the district secretary secure a 
sample of every tract printed by the Missionary Society, with a 
price list. If he should put one out each year himself it would 
often be of special value. From time to time call the district's 
attention to a particular tract or article or book. Take, for in- 
stance, such a tract as "A Great Merchant's Estimate," the em- 
phatic testimony of Mr. John Wanamaker to the value of invest- 
ment in "Missions in India." Such a statement should be put 
before the eyes of every Christian man in this country. And 
above all secure World-Wide Missions for every family that sub- 
scribes a dollar. There are still scores of pastors who fail to do 
this, though no better paper of its kind can be found on this 
continent, and all it costs is the trouble of furnishing a yearly list. 

5. Use returned missionaries. They are not all great speakers. 
Truth to tell, the pastors at home are not either. They are not 
all good "collection getters." Do not use them for this purpose. 
But they are all men of intelligence, with expert knowledge in 
this particular matter. Make frequent inquiries at the missionary 
office for a suitable missionary and arrange an itinerary through 
the district. A small basket collection will always pay expenses. 
Urge the pastors to secure the attendance of the official boards, 
League cabinets, Sunday school officers and teachers. Let the 
coming of the missionary be an event, for he is a soldier from 
the front who at least is able to tell us how the battle goes. And 



THE DISTRICT MISSIONARY SECRETARY 235 

often he does so with such grace and charm and power as is 
rarely found in other men. 

6. Help the Epworth Leagues. The district secretary, of course, The Young 
will be very close to the Epworth League district missionary church 
secretary, for the latter has to do with a part, and a very im- 
portant part, of the former's field. Sympathetic, helpful coopera- 
tion will always be welcomed by the young life of the Church. 

It will often be very useful to show the League missionary offi- 
cials the great value of the student campaigner, the missionary 
libraries, the "Station Plan" method of increasing knowledge and 
gifts, the mission study classes, etc. 

7. Enlist every Sunday school superintendent' s help to organize Sunday 
the school into a missionary society, and refuse to allow the school Scho ° l8 
to be stampeded into assuming financial obligations for all manner 

of causes that have no Disciplinary place in permanent claims 
upon the offerings of the school. 

8. Guard the Missionary Society's interests at the camp meet- Occasional 
ings, conventions, rallies, etc. The managers of these gatherings a enn S s 
usually follow the lines of least resistance. Whatever interests 

ask for representation and will provide suitable speakers are likely 
to be favored. The result is that in very few camp meetings, and 
until recently in very few district gatherings, is the work of the 
Missionary Society discussed and advocated unless a special 
officer of the Missionary Society be in attendance. By the ap- 
pointment of a district missionary secretary the society ought to 
be assured that on every appropriate occasion its work will be 
described and its rightful claims to the thought and affection, the 
prayers and gifts of our people will be set forth. It will be the 
district secretary's care to see that "Missionary Day" shall mean 
not only the two women's societies, with all the splendid work 
they are doing, but also that parent society out of which they have 
sprung, for whose help they exist, and without whom their work 
would be comparatively meaningless at home and abroad. 

9. And this chiefly : He will get the elder to introduce the The Iowa 
"Iowa Plan" of missionary subconventions in every church of the Plan 
district, in which every pastor shall set forth the great truths of 
missions to his neighbor churches before he takes the collection 

in his own. I call this the "Iowa Plan" because it has been more 
generally worked there than in any other State. The plan is 
briefly this : The district is divided according to convenience of 



236 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



How it 
Works 



A New 

Missionary 

Bay 



travel into from four to eight subdistricts. On the appointed day 
all the pastors and many of the laymen of the subdistrict meet. 
Addresses covering the whole field of missions are delivered. 
Each church in turn entertains the subdistrict convention. The 
pastors deliver the same prepared address at all the churches. 
The speech is old; the audience is new. The presiding elder 
spends a month; each pastor spends from five to eight days in 
this campaign. At the close every church has been reached, local 
objections and misunderstandings have been met. Besides, the 
pastors themselves have each prepared a new missionary address 
worthy of the attention of his fellow-preachers, and they return 
to their own churches prepared to do the best they can. It is 
practically a yearly missionary revival, and is better than any 
imported help. In consequence of this plan Iowa as a State leads 
the entire middle West. The figures are approximately as fol- 
lows : Indiana, 33 cents per member ; Michigan, 42 ; Wisconsin, 
42 ; Ohio, 43 ; Illinois, 5 1 ; and Iowa, 54 ; while New England 
is 47 and New York 57, or only 3 cents a member ahead of Iowa, 
which is moving up fast. I attribute in very large degree the 
missionary intelligence and forward movement in Iowa to this 
plan of missionary subconventions, which bring the information 
and enthusiasm of many pastors to the service of each church. 
Here is room for very real helpfulness. Secure the adoption of 
the "Iowa Plan" and you will secure every pastor's study of the 
current facts of missions and every church's hearing at least once 
a year from other lips than their pastor, from whom they will 
hear oftener the claims of the Missionary Society's work upon 
their hearts and pocketbooks. 

In a word, the district missionary secretaries will greatly 
serve the cause we love if they will take their office seriously 
and become in preeminent ways eyes, ears, brain, and tongue for 
the Missionary Society in their own districts. This will mean the 
investment of some time, much thought and prayer, and some 
money. Many disappointments and discouragements await the 
earnest worker, but the office is full of possibilities, and God is 
raising up and will raise up all through the denomination men 
who will impregnate the Church with such a leaven of a larger 
missionary knowledge and interest as will make possible that 
glad day of imperial plans and effort which is so rapidly coming. 
We are in the dawn of a new missionary day. The Christless 



THE DISTRICT MISSIONARY SECRETARY 2%J 

nations are strangely stirred. The mighty forces of modern 
civilization all converge upon the waking of ancient peoples out 
of the sleep of centuries. Commerce, science, political aggres- 
sion, all combine in various ways to shake old empires from the 
lethargy of the benumbing systems under which they have lived. 
Uneasily the peoples of the East turn from the darkling twilight 
of their own past to seek that which will fit them for the disturbed 
present and the ominous future. Upon what shall the inquiring 
eyes of these peoples waking from the sleep of the centuries rest ? 
Where shall the newly stirring nations find adequate foundations 
for the new civilization they must build? The insistent need of 
the day is for the Christian missionary and for the multiplied and 
invigorated agencies of the Christian Church to cry aloud in 
all lands, "Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, Jesus Christ 
which is Jesus Christ." The truth grows patent that for all the ^JJjition 
strenuous life of our new time, in which the whole world must 
increasingly find itself involved, there must be planted deep in 
the heart of every people that "fear of God" which is the begin- 
ning of wisdom and that love of our Lord Jesus Christ which 
"casteth out fear" of the untried path of progress up which the . 
whole human family is led. That there might be a better world 
about us, the kingdom of heaven must find its place universally 
within us. The world's great birthday into true life will be that 
missionary day when the Church will overtake the ages-old pro- 
gram of her Lord. 

It is the high privilege of the district missionary secretary, 
amid manifold discouragements, with expenditure of time and 
thought and money to hasten the Church toward the high noon 
of the missionary day, upon which the long, unending progress 
of humanity depends. 



238 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

WHAT THE PASTOR CAN DO 

The Rev. J. O. Wilson, D.D. 

The Pivotal I have the conviction that my subject requires me to deal 

with the pivotal man, for if any man more than another holds the 
key to the situation it is the pastor. He is the common clay out 
of which we mold our missionaries, editors, secretaries, book 
agents, and bishops. All these chief functionaries were once 
common clay, and as such they are more important than the stamp 
of the mold they bear. The minister is greater than his office. 
We are all, therefore, equally complimented by the assumption 
that the pastor, more than any other man, holds the key to the 
situation. If this be an unwarrantable assumption we shall be 
much relieved of an oppressive sense of responsibility. But if it 
be admitted that the pastor is indeed the pivotal man, then we 
desire to affirm and emphasize what we conceive to be the im- 
perative need of the cause of missions at the dawn of the twentieth 
century. This superlative need is not better organization. We 
have machinery to let. Nor is it an abler secretarial force, nor 
more heroic and self-sacrificing missionaries, but a missionary 
pastorate. Make all our pastors missionaries in spirit and our 
membership would instantly catch the contagion. "Like priest, 
like people." A missionary pastorate will give us a missionary 
people, and a missionary people will give us an overflowing 
treasury, and nothing else will. 

Pastoral # What, then, can the pastor do ? Practically nothing unless he 

ossi 1 i les ^ fi re( j vvith a missionary spirit. If in his soul this electric 
current has not been turned on and he has refused connection 
with the outside world he is a cumberer of the ground and only 
in our way. Our bishops are called of God to remove such an 
unworthy man. But if the connections have all been made and 
God has turned on the current no other man can more electrify 
the world than the missionary pastor. His Christ-given creden- 
tials make him of necessity a world force. He is God's ambassa- 
dor to all nations, with passport countersigned by Christ. If St. 
Peter and we his legitimate successors in the apostolate do not 
hold the keys to the world's evangelization, who does? One 
need not become an editor, or secretary, or bishop, before he can 
be one of God's world forces. Every pastor in Christendom is 



WHAT THE PASTOR CAN DO 239 

such a force by virtue of his office, and he dare not shift the 
responsibility by declining the honor. Both the honor and the 
responsibility are peculiarly his by divine appointment. 

Hence, as touching the cause of missions, the pastor's obliga- 
tion is twofold and imperative : 

First, he must conscientiously relate himself to the treasury of A Practical 
the missionary society in a most practical way; practical, for Relatl0n 
this world will never be saved by theory divorced from practice. 
An ounce of practice is worth a ton of precept. Every pastor is 
required, not only by the Church, but by the Lord of the Church, 
to take the collection for missions, and to see that that collection 
fairly represents the ability of his congregation. I know there 
are pastors who do not admit this obligation. They neither them- 
selves contribute to the cause of missions nor urge this duty 
upon their people. They regard the handling of finances of any 
kind as beneath a true minister's dignity. They have forgotten 
that Jesus once stood over against the treasury and must have 
been interested in the collection, for he immortalized one of the 
contributors. A rich man once told Christ that he gave the half 
of his goods to feed the poor, and our Lord immediately honored 
that man with a visit, and abode at his house. Christ has a warm 
appreciation of the fifty-per-cent man, though he has found com- 
paratively few since the days of Zaccheus. He would have found 
many if his ministers had been on the lookout, and his missionary 
treasury would not have been so sadly depleted but for the sub- 
lime disinterestedness of too many pastors. 

There is a vast mine of wealth in the Methodist Episcopal A Vast Mine 
Church, and it is every pastor's duty not only to discover that ° ea 
mine but also to work it for the kingdom of God. In this day 
when money is so much a need of the Church we are inwardly 
glad that every man among us is not a Lazarus. God did not 
mean that Methodism should forever impotently lie at the rich 
man's gate, but that we should one day carry the key to the man- 
sion. That day has come. We have our rich men. They are 
numerous and would be much more generous in their support 
of missions if they had the inspiration of a truly missionary 
pastorate. 

God's call for such a pastorate is emphasized by our access to The Pastor's 
the wealth of the Church. By a failure to respond to this call church's 
our ministry has inadvertently or negligently diverted untold Wealth 



240 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Reflex 
Results of 
Giving 



thousands from the missionary treasury. Never in the history 
of the Church was there a time when God called so loudly for a 
missionary ministry and a money-getting pastorate. To preach 
men's souls into heaven is our first duty; our second duty is to 
preach their hoarded wealth out of their coffers into the Lord's 
treasury. Herein is our responsibility. Suppose a pastor says, 
"I do not care to work this mine." God cares, for this wealth is 
absolutely essential to the progress of his kingdom and the 
salvation of the heathen world. As Christ needed the gold of 
the wise men to see him through Egypt in his infancy, so he 
needs the gold of the rich men of to-day to see him through 
Africa and China and Japan and India. Somebody must get 
this gold for Christ. Who must do it? Why, the men who 
ought to do it, Christ's ministers, to whom he has given access 
to the wealth of his people. It is a pastor's imperative duty not 
only to inspire men to give their hearts to God, but also their 
wealth. A failure to do this has crippled God's great enterprises 
and retarded his kingdom a thousand years. 

But not alone for the sake of God's cause in the earth should we 
urge upon men the duty of Christian benevolence, but also for 
the sake of the man solicited. For if holding on to his wealth 
sent the rich young ruler to perdition, will it do less for the men 
of to-day? To allow them to try the experiment without an 
earnest remonstrance makes us criminally responsible before 
God. One of the very best ways of getting men's souls for 
Christ is to get their wealth for God. Hence, our motive in 
urging men generously to support the cause of missions is two- 
fold, the salvation of the heathen and the salvation of the 
contributor. By urging upon men the duty of Christian benevo- 
lence we make them our debtor. By tapping their mine of wealth 
we enrich them more than they enrich the Church. Hence I 
have no apology to offer for calling on men to help God save a 
lost world. God never meant an apostle to be an apologist ! In 
carrying forward his great missionary enterprises God needs 
large capital, millions ! Let every pastor turn missionary and 
practically relate himself to the missionary treasury, and these 
required millions shall be forthcoming. This every pastor can 
do and ought to do for so great a cause. 

But great as this obligation is it is not his first duty. The truly 
missionary pastor is called of God, not primarily to take the mis- 



WHAT THE PASTOR CAN DO 24.I 

sionary collection, but to make missionaries and to create in the Creating a 
earth a missionary Church. This is clearly apparent in the ^ lssl o nar y 
teaching office of the pastor. His commission reads, "Go teach 
all nations." The pastor is God's instructor of the people, his 
mouthpiece to the nations. He must receive from Christ great 
draughts of the missionary spirit and rebreathe it into the souls 
of men. As Christ's words fairly glowed with missionary 
warmth, so must the words of his representatives. If every 
church in Methodism is not a missionary church it is because the 
minister in the pulpit has not properly used his teaching office. 
Every pastor may have and will have a missionary church if he 
will patiently and persistently urge upon his people these con- 
siderations : 

First, the imperative obligation of heart growth with reference Heart 
to missions. The truly missionary heart is a thing of growth. Growtn 
It is to be developed as the student develops his mind or the 
athlete his muscle. We must grow it as the farmer grows grain. 
When God commands us to "grow in grace" he is speaking of 
heart growth. This is peculiarly true of the missionary heart. 
If one would have it he must grow it. It will not grow itself. 
In this it resembles the skilled hand, the powerful arm, the taste 
for music, the love of art, and the gift of oratory. These all are 
things of growth. Demosthenes was not a prodigy, but a growth, 
a development. Raphael cultivated his love of art, or we should 
never have had the Sistine Madonna. He grew the artist's soul 
before he painted the artist's picture. Angelo's "David" gives 
proof that the soul of the sculptor was full-grown. Beethoven 
had cultivated his musical taste fifty years before he gave to the 
world his masterpiece — the "Ninth Symphony." Paul's mission- 
ary heart was a thing of growth. "He stirred up the gift that 
was in him." But such a heart growth implies an abundance 
of wholesome food. It must daily feed and feast on missionary 
information. Statistics, when properly digested, are not dry, but Abundance of 
fattening. They put flesh on the dry bones and new blood in 
the sluggish veins. The soul that can remain lean in the presence 
of the stupendous missionary movements of our age is either 
grossly ignorant or possessed of devils which turn the truth into 
a lie. Such missionary information will compel a corresponding 
heart growth unless our people are spiritually dead. Every pastor 
in his teaching office can put this missionary information within 
16 



242 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Wider 
Vision 



A Pastor 
not to be 
Localized 



Model 
Missionaries 



the reach of all his people. He can produce a missionary church, 
by urging upon his people the duty of heart growth along mis- 
sionary lines. This he can do and this he ought to do. Both 
God and the Church demand the prompt payment of this im- 
perious obligation. 

His next duty is to urge upon his people the cultivation of the 
wider vision, the broadening of their spiritual horizon. If one 
would grow the missionary heart he must betake himself to 
world thoughts, world plans, world sympathies, world benevo- 
lence, and world prayers. He must fall in love with the world, 
whatever its color, for a man's soul does not always correspond 
to the color of his skin. There are white men with black souls 
and black men with white souls. When Christ came to redeem 
the world he did not draw the color line. He died for the world, 
and we insult his breadth of plan when we restrict the benefits 
of the atonement to our little corner. Cleveland is not the world, 
nor Chicago, nor New York, nor Paris, nor London; they are 
only a little section of it, a mere fragment. We should be 
ashamed to offer Christ a fragment when he died for the whole. 

As a pastor I refuse to be localized. I resent the idea that I am 
simply a New York preacher. I am an American preacher. I 
am a cosmopolitan preacher. God has given me an audience of 
nations and of continents. With Christ and with Wesley I claim 
the world for my parish, and God insists that my Church shall 
have a parish not less extended. Christ's dream was of universal 
empire, and we dare not entertain a dream less wide. Let this 
great thought have proper birth in the soul, and every Christian 
will be transformed into a missionary the boundary of whose 
parish shall be the limits of the world itself. Our world of en- 
deavor must be Christ's world. The pastor who allows his 
congregation to side-track this stupendous truth, or to substitute 
for it a self-centered or local interest, owes an apology to earth 
and heaven. He can and must make his Church a world force by 
urging upon his people the duty of heart growth along mission- 
ary lines, and the cultivation of the wider vision. 

But for the highest inspiration let him urge upon his people 
the constant study of models, or model missionaries. How may 
a man become a perfect artist? There must be the artist's fancy 
at bottom, and then the study of models. If one aspires to be a 
great painter he must study the old masters, all of them. He 



WHAT THE PASTOR CAN DO 243 

goes to Titian for brilliancy of coloring, to Rubens for mechanical 
perfection and joyousness in animal vigor, and to Raphael for 
purity and religious emotion. He must seek to blend the excel- 
lences of each into a unity of perfection of which he shall be the 
fitting exponent. Genius as the foundation — the faithful study 
of models as the superstructure. In just this way must one 
acquire the perfect missionary heart. First there must be the 
God-touched nature within, then the study of model missionaries. 
And what glorious models God has given the Church! Bishop 
Taylor — that noble, self-sacrificing, lion-hearted lover of races 
and of continents. He has come to this Convention, a delegate 
from heaven, I fancy, and, lo! he has brought with him Africa 
and the world. What an inspiring model! And here is Paul, 
still carrying on his great heart Macedonia, and Ephesus, and 
Athens, and Rome, and "the regions beyond." What an inspiring 
model! And here, too, is Christ, the only perfect model. He 
was four thousand years reaching his mission station, and scarcely 
had he begun his work when the wicked heathen crucified him 
between two thieves. But the boundless love of the missionary 
made him gladly die to save a heathen world. "God had but one 
Son, and he became a foreign missionary." And what a model 
he gave the Church ! 

Ah ! why is there such a humiliating contrast between our lives The 
and these lofty-souled missionaries, Taylor, Paul, and Christ, 5eart° nary 
who call to us from the far heights? Because we have not 
grown the missionary heart, nor cultivated the wider vision, nor 
properly studied our models as men of world thought and world 
endeavor and world love. O for a missionary pastorate worthy 
to wear the mantle of its missionary Lord — a pastorate which 
shall create throughout the earth a missionary Church and fire 
it with a deathless purpose to bring the world to Christ ! 



244 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Determina- 
tion and 
High Aim 



Organization 



How Make 

Meetings 

Interesting 



Missionary 
Libraries 



WHAT THE SUNDAY SCHOOL SUPER- 
INTENDENT CAN DO 

Mr. Willis W. Cooper 

The Sunday school superintendent must have a determination 
to place his school in the front rank of those which would do great 
things for missions. He must aim high and must ever remember 
that no faint-hearted general ever scaled a height or won a battle. 
He must be courageous, even audacious, in his determination, as 
well as wise in his leadership. 

Organization is the next essential. The school should be or- 
ganized as a missionary society, with a president, vice president, 
secretary, and treasurer, as is provided and outlined in the Ap- 
pendix to the Discipline. The superintendent should see that the 
society never misses holding its regular meetings. He should 
realize that the missionary cause is the most important branch of 
Church work. The spirit of conquest should take possession of 
his soul, and with this spirit let him realize the great responsibility 
as well as the great privilege of enlisting an army of young 
people in the principal business of the Church, namely, that of 
sending the Gospel to all nations, thus fulfilling the last command 
of the Saviour. The monthly meeting is the invaluable medium 
through which the superintendent may reach every member of his 
school. 

These meetings can be made most interesting and instructive 
by the use of readings from our wealth of missionary literature, 
by exhibitions of missionary curios, letters from missionaries in 
the field, map exercises (showing the location of missionary sta- 
tions), description of missionary countries, concerts, recita- 
tions, etc. 

The superintendent should see that the library is well supplied 
with missionary books, or, better still, see that a separate mission- 
ary library is secured, in which shall be placed all of the latest and 
best missionary books as fast as they come from the press. The 
circulation of these books is most important ; for without reading 
our people cannot become intelligent and informed concerning a 
subject of such vast range and importance. In these later days 
there is no longer any difficulty in obtaining suitable books. 
Some of the most intensely interesting books written are of mis- 



Committee 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT 245 

sionary achievement and experience. They read like the most 
thrilling romance. The superintendent should read the books 
himself and never lose an opportunity of calling attention to their 
delightful charm and to the importance of every member of his 
school reading them. A school which will read missionary litera- 
ture cannot but become enthusiastic in the support of missions. 

Two of the most carefully selected libraries are available at 
the lowest possible cost, namely, those prepared by the Student 
Missionary Campaign, 57 Washington Street, Chicago, Illinois ; 
No. 1, with sixteen volumes, and No. 2, with twenty volumes. 
Either of them can be secured at the small cost of ten dollars. 

A book committee should be appointed, whose first business Book 
shall be to read the books and other literature in the missionary 
library, and as fast as read to hand them to other members of the 
school, at the same time securing a promise that they will in turn 
read and recommend others to read in order that the entire school 
may become interested in the cause of missions. 

The officers of the Sunday school missionary society (the Sun- Officers' 
day school superintendent being one of them) should hold regular ee mgs 
monthly meetings and carefully plan the exercises for the meet- 
ings on Missionary Sunday. This board should meet and plan 
with the pastor for making the most of each opportunity of pre- 
senting the subject of missions to the school. They should visit 
the local meetings of the Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary 
Societies and correspond with leaders in other schools, thus 
seeking to learn of the best methods of creating missionary intel- 
ligence and enthusiasm. Such a board, meeting monthly for real 
aggressive work, cannot fail to catch the missionary spirit. 

The Sunday school superintendent should keep the cause promi- collection 
nently before the school. Perhaps the best method is to prepare charts 
a chart large enough to be seen plainly from all parts of the Sun- 
day school room, across which shall be ruled columns standing 
for each month in the year. Then crossing these there should be 
vertical columns to represent the Conference years. Here the 
monthly collections can be marked, and thus by comparing with 
previous months or with the same month of the preceding year, 
the school can see whether or not it is falling behind or increasing 
in its offering. A skillful superintendent can urge the school to 
constant effort that it may excel all previous records. A chart 
record so prepared will be a constant reminder to the superintend- 



246 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

ent as well as to the entire school that it has an important duty to 
perform, and it will be impossible to overlook the recurring 
monthly service. We know of a number of schools which have 
adopted this plan and have quadrupled their collections. 
Birthday A considerable sum can be gathered up each year by an agree- 

Thank ment on the part of the school that each member shall give as a 

thank offering on the Sabbath nearest his birthday one cent for 
each year of his age. The superintendent can make a place in the 
program of the school at which time he shall ask the question: 
"Who has had a birthday during the past week?" Then he shall 
give an opportunity for any such to come forward and give the 
offering to the treasurer of the society. These sums should not 
be publicly announced, lest some sensitive person should be em- 
barrassed. The superintendent can stimulate the offering by 
keeping posted and stating as the year progresses the aggregate 
dollars collected for this fund. The secretary can perform an 
important part in this work by keeping a birthday record of the 
membership of the school, and by the use of a neatly printed card 
of congratulation and good wishes mailed to such members before 
the Sabbath nearest the birthday remind them of the "Birthday 
Thank Offering Fund." A secretary who loves the cause of mis- 
sions will find the small labor of such a task delightful. 

The primary department should be organized in all essentials 
as is the older section. 
Class Spirit The superintendent who is observing will have found that the 

class spirit which is so stimulating in our institutions of learning 
can be engendered in the Sunday school. The social life in the 
school can be used to help the cause of missions. Class receptions 
and entertainments can be held for the worthy purpose of raising 
money for the missionary cause. Most delightful programs, con- 
sisting of music, recitations, etc., may be arranged, at which 
refreshments may or may not be served. An admission fee can 
be charged or freewill offerings taken. These reunions will 
doubly serve to cement fellowship and raise money for the spread 
of the Gospel. By wise planning on the part of the superintendent 
and the Sunday school missionary board a healthy rivalry between 
the several classes of the school can be promoted. 

The superintendent is regarded as an example of all that is 
good. He can do much to stimulate heroic giving by leading in 
the several methods here outlined, especially by being careful to 



. THE SUNDAY SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT 247 

observe the birthday offerings, and to be present at the class The 
receptions. He cannot consistently urge others to faithfulness superintend- 
unless he himself is faithful. If he is able, and is a faithful Example 
steward of the Lord in the cause of missions, he can offer on Mis- 
sionary Sunday to add one dollar to the collection of the class that 
will give most liberally. Or he can offer to match with his per- 
sonal contribution, on a particular Rally Sunday, a dollar for 
every other dollar that the school will contribute, and urge them 
to be as liberal as possible, thus securing a handsome contribution 
for that Sunday. Or a similar proposition might be made at the 
closing of the Conference year, making all four Sundays in the 
last month Missionary Sundays. A wise Sunday school superin- 
tendent can plan his finances for this benevolence in such a way 
that his example in giving will be a great stimulus to hundreds of 
others. 

As a general depends upon his subordinate officers, or the The Corps of 
president upon his cabinet, to help him plan and carry forward Teacliers 
his policy, so the wise superintendent will enlist his corps of 
teachers in the enterprise of saving not only the members of his 
school for Christ, but also the millions beyond the sea. His 
teachers have confidence in him as their chosen leader and will 
rally around him if he will call them to his aid. If the teachers 
can be induced to enter enthusiastically into all of the plans for 
missions they will carry the school. Next to the parent, the Sun- 
day school teacher is loved and revered by the child. Hence, by 
all means, the superintendent should see that his teachers are in 
thorough harmony with him in his efforts to bring the school to 
its highest possible standard in missionary achievement. 

Much can be done to stimulate missionary interest in the Sun- Support of 
day school by becoming responsible for the support of one or c £f^ n 
more workers in the foreign field. Ten to fifteen dollars will keep 
a boy in one of our schools in the foreign field for a year. A four- 
years' course will give him a practical Christian education, at the 
I end of which time he will go out into life to speak for the Chris- 
tian religion. Photographs of such boys can be secured from the 
teachers in our foreign schools, and at small expense they can be 
enlarged, framed, and hung upon the walls of the Sunday school 
room, and thus become a silent object lesson and a constant in- 
spiration to the school. Several such boys can be supported from 
the birthday offering alone. 



248 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Pastor- 
teachers 



A Home 
Pastor 
and a 
Foreign 
Pastor 



Giving of 
Self 



A pastor-teacher can be supported in the foreign field for from 
thirty to fifty dollars per year. A teacher or class in our home 
field will be delighted with the noble effort and sacrifice necessary 
for such a deed. The boys or teachers thus supported will gladly 
write letters to the school or individual furnishing the support. 
Their letters will be translated by the members of the foreign 
school and read in our home school. They thus become "live 
wires," furnishing information, inspiration, and encouragement 
to us, and leading us to do still greater things for the sake of Him 
who first loved us. 

We are on the eve of the greatest missionary awakening the 
world has ever seen, and the time is not far distant when we shall 
come to feel that it is the height of selfishness to expend thou- 
sands of dollars annually for our own comfort and pleasure in 
church services, with expensive church choir, organist, and 
"star" preachers, while we are giving a paltry few hundred dollars 
for the help of those who are dying without the knowledge of 
Christ. As fast as possible the Sunday school superintendent 
should educate the pupils in his school to believe that the very 
least they can do is to become responsible for the support of a 
pastor in mission fields equal in ability to the one who preaches 
in their own pulpit. Perhaps some member of his school will be 
their representative, and the "live wire" will be attended with 
intensified interest. 

The Sunday school superintendent can do most for the cause 
of missions by giving himself. He may not be able to go per- 
sonally to the foreign field, but if he in any sense sees his oppor- 
tunity he must feel upon him the responsibility of keeping one or 
more representatives at the front of the battle. God will hold 
him responsible. If he reads the current reports from the field, 
he will learn that our missionaries are "sick at heart" because of 
the pleading of the heathen for missionaries to teach them the 
way of life. These cannot be sent because of the lack of funds 
with which to pay the transportation charges and support of hun- 
dreds of our best young men and women who are not only willing 
but anxious to respond to the Macedonian cry for help. The 
Sunday school superintendents must be brought to see their 
responsibility as well as their opportunity. 

If the three million pupils and teachers of our thirty 
thousand schools would give but a penny a week for missions, it 



THE SUNDAY SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT 249 

would amount to more than a million and a half per year. But Potential 
such a standard is by far too low; every school could easily Givin S 
average five times this amount. Upon the superintendent rests 
the responsibility for which he must account to his Maker. The 
Sunday school superintendent by giving himself to the cause of 
missions can hasten the day when he shall see his Lord. It is 
possible to evangelise the world in this generation, and he must 
see that by withholding his enthusiastic support he is withholding 
the talent which the Lord has placed in his hands. It is a tre- 
mendous responsibility, and can be released only by a complete 
consecration to the cause for which the Saviour came to this 
world. 

The Sunday school superintendent by giving himself to the Reflex 
cause of missions will be the means of building up the cause of Influences 
Christ in his own community. It has never been known to fail 
that in some way God particularly blesses the church or school 
which possesses the "missionary spirit." Just as this spirit is 
manifest will they prosper, both financially and numerically. 
Hundreds of instances can be named where the missionary col- 
lections having been doubled, the membership of the church and 
the collections for all other benevolences and Church interests have 
likewise doubled. 

If the Sunday school superintendent will give himself to the what One 
cause of missions he will intensify his own life and experience Man Can ^ 
and will help to edify and build up the Christian character of those 
under his charge — the children and young people who are the 
hope of the Church for to-morrow. It is all-important that the 
coming type of Christians shall be noble, liberal, and Christlike in 
character. One consecrated man in each church whose zeal is 
constantly at white heat will do more to inspire those whose lives 
he touches than a thousand listless, worldly, selfish "professors of 
religion." What nobler cause than missions can possess a Christ- 
like man? Who stands before the people with a greater oppor- 
tunity 7 in his grasp than the Sunday school superintendent ? 



250 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A Mother of 
Churches 



A Postponed 
Funeral 



Increasing 
Benevolences 



WHAT A LOCAL CHURCH HAS DONE 

The Rev. J. W. Magruder 

A local church in a great city has accomplished something if 
it has remained downtown without running down grade, and if 
it has become a contributor to missions without itself becoming 
a mission dependent upon a missionary society. That is a part 
of the achievement of Wesley Chapel, Cincinnati. The mother 
and grandmother of nearly every Methodist church in Cincinnati 
and vicinity, "Old Wesley" all but sacrificed her own life in 
giving birth to her many children, and in feeding and clothing a 
swarm of grandchildren who were not always overscrupulous 
about living upon her bounty. The time came when she reached 
the poverty line, and to save herself from eviction she was com- 
pelled to put a mortgage of $10,000 upon her old home, and the 
property sank into decay. 

To-day, to use an expression of Dr. Buckley, she has "renewed 
the longevity of her youth," and is setting the pace for her 
numerous offspring in a way which makes them rather proud of 
their lineage. Her funeral has been postponed. All talk about 
turning her into a mission has ceased. She insists upon continu- 
ing as a church. She knows by experience how much of truth is in 
the rather shocking declaration of the Rev. George L. McNutt, 
that poor people of the self-respecting sort "may go to hell, but 
they will not go to a mission." The poor do not want a mission 
any more than the rich do; in fact, not so much so, for some of 
the rich want missions — "for poor people." Wesley Chapel per- 
sists in maintaining her church standing. With a seating ca- 
pacity exceeded by only three other Protestant churches in the 
city, and with an enrollment of 718 full members, she has become 
a factor to be reckoned with. Last year she paid into the Mis- 
sionary Society as much as all the other ten downtown churches 
and $13 over, or a total of $1,060. 

The beginning of better days came when she cleared off her 
mortgage indebtedness, and hit upon the idea of obeying the rule 
of her own Discipline against "borrowing without a probability 
of paying; or taking up goods without a probability of paying 
for them." At that time the amount of her contributions to the 
Missionary Society was not a matter of record. But later, in 



WHAT A LOCAL CHURCH HAS DONE 25 1 

1889, I find that her total benevolences amounted to $629, of 
which $396 was for missions. In 1892, at the end of the pas- 
torate of my honored predecessor, the total benevolence had 
risen to $1,036, of which $500 was for missions. Then came the 
panic of 1893, when there would have been an inevitable slump 
had not the people nerved themselves to heroic giving; and 
twenty-seven of them organized into a Christian Stewards' 
League, after the plan of Thomas Kane, the well-known Chicago 
"layman." The total benevolences kept on rising until they 
reached $1,830; of which $576 was for missions. In May, 1895, 
the final feature in the evolution of their financial plan was 
added, by supplementing the old subscription plan with the now 
much-mooted tithing system. 

Little did anyone at that time imagine they were inaugurating How a 
a scheme which would erelong be of interest to Methodists and *JIf2 ent 
multitudes of Protestants throughout the world. It began at a 
little dinner party given by one of the official members and his 
wife to the pastor and two other officials and their wives. The 
question of church finance was introduced — the inevitable topic; 
for where two or three members of an official board are gathered 
together, there is the subject of finance sure to be in the midst 
of them. But one of the party, who was "a lawyer and an honest 
man," had something new to offer. The struggle for existence 
which, he declared, had been exhausting the energies of Wesley 
Chapel for nearly twenty years was not peculiar to her. Nor was 
it due to her being a downtown church whose well-to-do members 
had gone to heaven or to the suburbs. The same shaky or in- 
solvent condition was characteristic of all churches, urban, sub- 
urban, and rural. Scarcely one was in easy financial condition. 
Nearly all have chronic deficiencies, and resort to special collec- 
tions and catchpenny schemes to meet their annual budget. There 
was something radically wrong. Either the great Head of the 
Church is lacking in business sense or else he has some kind of a 
system of finance. "Now," said he, "I have been looking into 
this matter and studying the Scripture from Genesis to Revela- 
tion; and I find that the tithe, which thousands of Christians 
everywhere have covenanted to set apart for religious and 
benevolent purposes, was not intended to be scattered broadcast 
according to individual notion or caprice ; but in every instance 
mentioned in the Scripture 'the whole tithe* was to be brought 



252 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



One Han 
with a 
Conviction 



Results of 
Tithing 



'into the storehouse,' that is, the church, to which every tither 
belongs." 

I need scarcely say that we at once withstood this lawyer to 
his face, and denounced his "Hebrew old-clothes philosophy." 
Not one of the stock objections to the tithing system was allowed 
to go by default. We exposed its narrowness, its burdensome- 
ness, its inequity, its impracticability ; it was legalism and literal- 
ism gone mad. As for ourselves, we were no longer "under the 
law, but under grace." His final reply was: "You may lean to 
your understandings, if you like, just as all the people have been 
doing. But your church will sink into poverty and pauperism, 
devoid of spiritual life and power, subsisting on oyster soup and 
ice cream and pink tea, clothed in crazy quilts and the left-over 
remnants of people's pocketbooks. For my part, I am tired of 
this tramping in the wilderness. Anaks or no Anaks, I have 
made up my mind that, beginning next Sunday, I will pay the 
price which all must pay if we ever are to cross over into the 
promised land." The upshot of it was that the rest of the party 
followed this lead, the pastor bringing up the rear; the under- 
standing being that as Methodists we believed in experimental 
religion and would subject the tithing system to the test of 
experience, and that we would accept the challenge, "Prove me 
now herewith, saith Jehovah of hosts, if I will not open you the 
windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall 
not be room enough to receive it." 

The official board were slow about sanctioning the innovation. 
But when they came to understand that the advocates of the new 
system were not proposing to supersede the old subscription plan, 
but only to supplement it, and that they did not set themselves 
up as conscience-keepers for others, but left each one free to 
decide for himself before God whether he would continue under 
the old subscription plan or adopt the tithing system, all opposi- 
tion vanished. 

You know something of the result. The contributions of Wes- 
ley Chapel to missions alone in 1895 were $576 ; in 1901 the 
amount rose to $1,060. And the total income for one year from 
this people, none of whom were rich, and perhaps six of whom 
were able to own their own homes, while the rank and file were 
wage earners, casual workers, or dependent poor, amounted to 
more than $9,000. The tithe book shows that last year, out of 



WHAT A LOCAL CHURCH HAS DONE 



253 



769 members and probationers, only 162 were tithing; and of 
these 12 were children, 105 women, and 45 men. It is interesting 
to note here that the average income of every man, woman, and 
child in the United States is estimated at $300 ; the average tithe 
therefore would be $30. The treasurer's book at Wesley Chapel 
shows that the average amount paid by each tither there in 1901 
was $31.29. If all the 769 members had been tithing at the same 
rate the total income would have been $24,062 ; or enough to 
pay their present current expenses, and support the entire asso- 
ciated charities of Cincinnati, and to keep an army of 180 Bible 
readers in the field in India, China, and Japan. What a factor 
in the civic and religious life of the city would such a church 
become ! And what a missionary factor at home and abroad ! 

Now, the effect of this system of tithing, supplementing the 
old subscription plan, was not to do away with the literature and 
sermons from missionary secretaries and bishops, or the mission- 
ary organizations, home and foreign, in Sunday school and 
church, among children, young people, and old people. It only 
simplified and strengthened their work. WTien Bishop Thoburn 
came to Wesley Chapel in 1896 to preach a missionary sermon 
it seemed to be a new sensation to him not to have a collection to 
take. The fact is, this system transforms all these men and means 
into missionary educational institutions instead of peripatetic 
collecting agencies. The apostle Paul declared that he was not 
sent to baptize, but to preach the Gospel, and he thanked God 
for it. How thankful all of us would be not to be sent to collect 
moneys, but to give ourselves wholly to our business as apostles, 
prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers ! 

But a word of caution here. No system, even though divinely 
inspired, will work itself ! The law of the tithe is no more self- 
operative than is the law of the Sabbath. As a means of educa- 
tion at Wesley Chapel, we resorted to Quarterly Conferences on 
the subject of tithing. And every Tuesday evening the pastor 
had a class to which was assigned temporarily all new members, 
and there he instructed them on at least three points which I 
wish here to emphasize explicitly : 

1. "We seek not yours, but you." The Church can get along 
without any man's money. The man himself can get along with- 
out it. Indeed, if he is to get along at all in his religious life it 
must be by surrendering at least a portion of his money. For 



Strength and 
Simplicity in 
Church Work 



A Campaign 
of Education 



Giving 
Essential to 
Christian 
Life 



254 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

no man can be a Christian unless he gives. If a pastor is true 
to his people he must say to them frankly that they cannot by 
any possibility be Christians unless liberality abounds in their lives 
along with all the other graces of Christian character. 
God , s 2. If we acknowledge the obligation to tithe our incomes it 

Absolute mus t be on the basis of what in law is known as "the right of 

eminent domain;" in accordance with which no man can claim 
aught of the things which he possesses as his own (Acts iv, 32) — 
it is God's own ; and he is at liberty to do with it not as he pleases, 
but only as God pleases. And under certain circumstances God 
may please that he shall give up all his possessions. The apostles 
"forsook all" and followed Jesus. Paul "suffered the loss of all 
things." The disciples at Pentecost "brought all their possessions 
and laid them at the apostles' feet and had all things in common." 
That is to say, they did what hundreds and thousands of men did 
during the Spanish- American war — forsook fathers and mothers 
and brothers and sisters and houses and lands, yea, and their 
own lives; all without any assurance of more than thirteen dol- 
lars a month and board and clothes in this world, and with no 
assurance whatever in the world to come. But the giving up of 
all one's possessions obtains only in exceptional emergencies. 
Under ordinary circumstances men discharge their whole duty 
as citizens not by surrendering life and fortune, but by paying 
only a fraction of their income as a tax for the support of the 
government. In like manner, God does not ordinarily exact 
from us all that we possess, but only a tithe of our income, as a 
tax for the support of his kingdom in the world. 
A World-wide 3. The object of a tithe is not to support a church, but to 
Kingdom propagate a world-wide kingdom. The church which tithes' 

merely for self-support violates the spirit of the law and will be 
killed by the letter. Even if the people were to "bring the whole 
tithe into the storehouse" there would not be room enough to 
receive it. The church would be embarrassed by its very wealth, 
as was actually the case once in the time of Ezra, when it is 
recorded that there was ten times as much money as they knew 
what to do with. A tithing church cannot be self-centered and 
greedy, as the Jewish Church came to be; it must in the very 
nature of things be self-sacrificing, aggressive, catholic, and 
missionary. Only thus can it find an outlet for its superabundant 
income. 



PRAYER AND MISSIONS 255 

Be it understood, however, that the church which abounds in Tithes ana 
tithes and offerings is not necessarily a revival church. The Revivals 
churchmen of Judaism in their most degenerate days were noted 
for a liberality which would put the average Protestant to shame. 
They scrupulously tithed their entire income, even to the "mint 
and cumin and anise," but neglected "the weightier matters of 
the law." It is a singular fact, however, that, despite the religious 
degeneracies of the Jews and the age-long persecutions which 
they have suffered, no other people have enjoyed such extraor- 
dinary prosperity. And I am inclined to believe with President 
Bashford "that the financial success of the Jews is a constant 
miracle — a proof that obedience along even one line of righteous- 
ness brings its consequent prosperity." But if along with the 
obligation of tithing "the weightier matters of the law," such as 
"judgment, mercy, and faith," were fulfilled it would lay the 
foundation for the greatest revival of religion the world has ever 
seen. It would finance the Church and the kingdom and send 
missionaries into every part of the world, so that for the first 
time in world history the Gospel would be preached to every 
creature. And we might expect to see a fulfillment of the motto 
of the Student Volunteer movement : "The Evangelization of the 
World in This Generation." 



THE PLACE OF PRAYER IN MISSIONARY 

WORK 

Bishop H. W. Warren 

We have given the morning of this glorious Convention to the Macninery 
consideration of machinery, agencies, wheels, first and fifth, all andPower 
sorts of machinery. Now we come to consider the power. 
Ponderous, mighty, is the great mass of iron we call an engine, 
almost immovable by external agencies. But give it inner power 
and it takes a whole street over the ranges of mountains, and all 
humanity up the grades of civilization and progress. 

When you look at the heathen world, terrorized by superstition, Power in the 
debauched by lust, debased by poverty, and horribly deteriorated ^{J^* 1 
by the worship of abominable gods, and then think of the perfect 
stature of manhood in Christ Jesus, and that this stuff is to be 
made into the royal perfectness of the children of God, every 



256 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Source 
of Power 



Things 
Impossible 
to Men 



man asks, Who is sufficient for these things? And the answer 
inevitably is, No man. But you blazon on the side of this hall 
the true answer, "Not by might, not by an army, but by my 
spirit, saith Jehovah of hosts." The point I wish to make is that 
there is plenty of power, plenty provided in God's universe for 
the changing of sinners into saints, for the changing of ignorant 
men into wise men, for the changing of men dead in trespasses 
and sins into saints alive unto God through Jesus Christ our 
Lord. 

Of course there must be a realm of power about this world or 
it would not exist. There must be a source of power somewhere, 
or there would be none of these inferior powers. The powers 
that we handle, that we are proud to master, which we utilize for 
our advantage — not one of them is sufficient for its own origina- 
tion nor for its own continuance. Out of some other realm must 
have come the might of gravitation, chemical affinity, cohesion, 
steam, dynamite, lightning, not one of them sufficient for its own 
origination nor for its own continuance. Think of the crazy 
thought of men to have supposed that all earthly powers could 
have been evolved from a single potency of gravitation in the 
fiery star-dust of a cloud. Can we draw out from this force, the 
only one claimed to be in the universe, gravitation — can we draw 
out higher power, and still leave the other untouched ? Can cohe- 
sion, chemical affinity, all possible mights be drawn out of the 
lowest and still be as mighty as ever? Never. We are domed 
over, domed under, girt round, and permeated through with a 
spiritual power out of which all others must come. We wonder 
that gravitation, in its might of swinging worlds, does not get 
weary and exhausted. Why not? Hast thou not heard that the 
everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, 
neither is weary, and power out of him lasts through the 
millenniums unwearied and unweariable? 

There have been mights which we are incapable of measuring. 
This book, the Bible, is a record of things impossible to men: 
seas divided until a nation can go through dry-shod; fire out of 
heaven of such kind and fierceness that it consumes common 
water as common water puts out ordinary fire; all kinds of 
mights overmastering the lower mights of earth. And these are 
as real as gravitation, as actual as any power we know of. 

The fact that men do not know of this power militates nothing 



PRAYER AND MISSIONS 257 

against its actual existence. For ages men walked the earth and Unknown 
never knew there was a gravitation. Men drank the sparkling Realms 
water, saw it distilled as the gentle dew, saw it glorified in the 
rainbow, and never knew that every drop of it was full of the 
irrepressible power of steam. For ages men walked the earth 
interpenetrated with the might of electricity, and it is only to-day 
that it floods our homes with lights and hurls the cars along the 
streets. The fact that we did not know it for thousands of years 
is no argument against its existence and power; and the fact 
that men do not know there are spiritual realms of might for the 
mastery of every other realm does not militate against its real 
existence. So it is true that there is a realm of power over, under, 
around, within, a power for mind and heart, as really as there is 
power of gravitation for matter. And men can find their way into 
this realm and stand in the midst of every hostile influence, and, 
strengthened of God, say to the mighty king, in reply to his com- 
mand to bow down, "We are not careful to answer thee, O king, 
in this matter, but be it known unto thee that we will not bow 
down." And armies of men, commands of king, the touch of 
fire to the flesh, do not alter that will which is strengthened out of 
the realm of power where the Will is infinite and almighty. 

Paul gives us a remarkable definition of the Gospel of Jesus The Gospel 
Christ — "It is power" — a definition that grows more clear, more 8 ower 
forceful, by every realm of power into which we break and every 
realm of mastery into which we come. The Gospel of Jesus 
Christ is power. This being true, how shall we find our way 
into that realm, as legitimate, as real, as subject to law, as ready 
to work for man, as any realm that exists wherever man has lived ? 

I said this book is a record of things impossible to men. But Men of 
they have been wrought. Clouds of thunderous darkness and 
rumbling wrath brooded over Sodom, but the lightnings were 
leashed over the pits of slime while Abram prayed. On the top 
of Carmel Elijah knelt by the drenched sacrifice and said: "O 
Lord, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known 
this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, 
and that I have done all these things at thy word. Hear me, O 
Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou, Lord, art 
God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again." Then fire 
fell that could consume water as easily as ordinary water puts out 

common fire. 

17 



258 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Jesus Christ 
and Prayer 



The Upper 
Room 



In the Heart 
of Africa 



An Appeal 



As has been quoted here this morning, from Dr. Livingstone 
in Africa, "God had but one Son, and he was a foreign mission- 
ary." How did he conduct his campaign? For himself? All 
night in prayer, dwelling in a realm of power surging about him, 
thrilling his being. How did he apply it? On the top of the 
Mount of Transfiguration he prayed till, glorified, transfigured, 
he shone in his original brightness. When the crisis hour came, 
all night again in prayer, falling on his face like Elijah on Carmel, 
"If it be possible, let this cup pass from me : nevertheless, not as 
I will, but as thou wilt." 

He was about going away, leaving a few timid scattered dis- 
ciples to turn the world upside down in the matter of morals and 
eternal hope. What should be done for them? How could they 
be empowered ? "Pray, pray the Father for the fulfillment of the 
promise of power." They obeyed. They gathered together in 
that upper room. Afterward Peter addressed an audience vastly 
larger than this one, and gathered three thousand trophies in a 
day. Was it Peter's eloquence, logic, argument ? No ; the power 
was received in that upper chamber before he came to the ordinary 
audience. The same thing all the way along. Luther storms 
heaven ; he is like Moses crying, "Lord, this, or blot my name out 
of thy book." Wesley, John Knox — they show you in Edinburgh 
where his knees wore the very floor away as he said, "O God, 
give me Scotland, or I die." Livingstone, in the heart of Africa, 
about to be translated, uses not his last moments for preaching; 
he is in his tent on his knees, and he storms heaven with his 
prayer till he cannot abide longer in the body, and he goes into 
the very Shekinah with his prayers to plead for Africa. And Hart- 
zell and Taylor have been there largely in answer, not to his might, 
nor to an army, but by the spirit of God employed by the dying 
missionary in Africa's great heart. And you all know, brethren — 
I speak with experimental men, practical men — that the great 
agency in your revivals, your missionary work, is somebody's 
prayer that will not let God go until far in the morning, until the 
breaking of the light, except God bless and give souls. 

This, then, being the real power of the missionary movement, 
I come to appeal to you. If I were to ask you for money to set 
India afire, to kindle a flame in Africa, to give China all it wanted, 
you could not respond. But I can appeal to you on a basis where 
everyone can be a glorious helper in the missionary cause. Every 



YOUNG PEOPLE AND MISSIONS 259 

man can put his hand, not into the treasuries of earth, but into 
the treasuries of heaven. Every lone woman in her garret or in 
her basement can find her way to God, and the great impetus of 
the mighty spirit of Jehovah himself fills the world not with 
might, nor with an army, but with the spirit of the living God. 
Practically, shall we now vow ourselves to new earnestness of 
prayer, pledge ourselves to daily — morning, evening, and night — 
petition to the court of Heaven that the spirit of the living God 
may abide on all our missions far and wide? 

Almighty, Almighty God, revive thy work. In the midst of A Prayer 
the years remember mercy, mercy for a lost and dying world. O 
Christ, thou hast died for them all. Send forth thy Spirit through 
every agency of the Church, through all our operations of mission- 
ary work; send forth thy Spirit until the heathen shall be given 
unto our Christ for an inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the 
earth for a possession. O Jesus, hasten that time. Amen. 



YOUNG PEOPLE AND MISSIONS 

Mr. S. Earl Taylor 

The young people's field, as it is outlined by the Board of 
Managers of our Missionary Society, consists of the Sunday 
schools, the young people's societies, and the colleges of our 
Church. 

We have been talking during these days about open doors. If The Open 
there were time one might well speak of one of the widest open g^ndatv 
doors on the face of the earth — the open door of the Sunday School 
school. If there is an open door anywhere it is the open door of 
the heart of a little child; and the three million young people 
and children enrolled in the Sunday schools of our Church are 
one of the most promising fields of missionary endeavor. But I 
have no time for the discussion of that phase of the subject to- 
night. I shall confine myself primarily to the young people as 
such, the young people of the churches and the young people of 
the colleges. 

I was greatly grieved when I first took up the young people's Prejudice and 
work under the direction of our board to receive a letter from a Indlfference 
man in an Eastern State. I had written to this man asking him 
if he would cooperate with us in promoting missionary life and 



260 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

work among the young people. His answer was, "I must refuse 
to serve on your committee, because I have serious doubts about 
the advisability of side-tracking the Epworth League for mis- 
sions." As I have been traveling around the country I have been 
convinced that there are a few, not many, but there are a few who 
are prejudiced against the missionary propaganda among the 
young. There are many more, and they are in the ranks of the 
pastorate, and some of them are among our presiding elders, who 
are almost totally indifferent to the subject. To-night I shall try, 
as briefly as I may, to bring forth some reasons why every mem- 
ber of our Church should be vitally interested in arousing, in 
enlisting, and in equipping the young people of our Church for 
the great missionary work which Christ has placed before us. 
A Vast In the first place it is a vast army — I say a vast army. In 

Army America we are so accustomed to think in millions, without un- 

derstanding at all what a million means, that the figures of them- 
selves mean very little. But do you know that the membership 
of the United Society of Christian Endeavor alone equals in 
number the great standing army of the German empire, the army 
of England, the army of France, the army of Russia, the armies 
of Scandinavia, the army of the United States, the armies of a 
dozen other smaller states and countries? In other words, the 
membership of the United Society of Christian Endeavor equals 
in number the standing armies of the civilized world. It is a 
vast army. 
The Meaning When a boy I used to go into father's library and read again 
and again the story of the civil war, and I think I got some con- 
ception, as I read those pages, of the number of men who laid 
down their lives and now sleep under the sod on the many battle- 
fields of the Southland ; some conception of the number of men 
who died in prison or of disease; some idea of the size of the 
armies whose tread shook the country as they came out at the 
call of Father Abraham. Our Epworth League, the Epworth 
League of the three larger branches of Methodism — the Cana- 
dian Methodist Church, our own Church, and the Church South — 
if the figures commonly given out be accepted at their face value — 
approximately equals in number the men who enlisted in the 
Federal armies from the time of the firing on Fort Sumter to Lee's 
surrender at Appomattox. It is a mighty army. 

Another illustration : Take the membership of the Christian 



of Statistics 



YOUNG PEOPLE AND MISSIONS 



26l 



Endeavor Society, the membership of the Epworth League, of 
the Baptist Young People's Union, of the Young People's Union 
of the United Brethren in Christ, of the Luther Leagues of 
America and the other smaller organizations of a similar char- 
acter, not counting at all the great Student Movement, and you 
have an army equal in size not only to the standing armies of the 
civilized world, but you may add to these armies the number of 
men who fought from 1861 to 1865; you may add the patriots 
who fought during the days of the Revolution, those who fought 
in the War of 1812, the soldier boys who fought in the war with 
Mexico, and the well-remembered heroes of our late Spanish 
war — you may add all those together and they do not equal in 
number the membership of these young people's societies. It is 
a vast army. 

And not only so ; it is a well-organized army. In our Epworth 
League, for illustration, we have our central organization, our 
General Conference District organizations, our State, our Con- 
ference, our district, our local organizations. The local organi- 
zations again are divided into departments, and these departments 
are under the supervision of chairmen or vice presidents, and it 
is possible for the leaders of the movement to send an order down 
the line, and "it almost reaches the last man before sunset." It 
is possible by the scratch of a pen in the central office of the Ep- 
worth League to direct the thought of a million and a half young 
people as they come together week by week in their devotional 
meetings. It is possible for three or four men, in a committee 
meeting in a hotel somewhere, by a single vote to assemble twenty 
thousand leaders in Toronto or out on the Pacific coast or in 
Detroit or anywhere they please. The young people are well 
organized and the force is easily movable. Because of their close 
organization the young people are easily influenced by the leaders. 
It is a most solemn thing for any man to be called to the spiritual 
leadership of this great army, for it is largely what the leaders 
make it. 

Not only is the young people's army organized, but by its 
peculiar plan of organization it is remarkably adapted to a world- 
wide enterprise. For instance, the Christian Endeavor Society, 
the Epworth Leagues, the Young People's Unions, and the other 
young people's societies constitute in themselves one great wing 
of an army. They are the base of supplies — the reserve forces. 



Many Young 

People's 

Societies 



A Well- 
organized 
Army 



Well Adapted 
to a 

World-wide 
Enterprise 



262 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

The Student Volunteer Movement and the other collegiate move- 
ments make up the other wing of the army. The students furnish 
the leaders, the captains of the host, and moreover they furnish 
the men who stand on the firing line, who are ready to go with the 
firing line to any part of the earth. Each of these divisions inde- 
pendently is extending itself throughout the earth. In the young 
people's movement, for instance, Father Clark, of the Christian 
Endeavor Society, is just now completing his third world-tour. 
The Christian Endeavor Society has a general secretary in Eu- 
rope, another in India, and is about to place another in China. It 
is seeking in these countries to reproduce the same type of organi- 
zation and work that is being produced in the United States. The 
Epworth League is also propagating itself in foreign lands. I 
wish we had here Dr. Goucher's banners that we have seen over 
in the exhibit — twenty-seven banners gathered at the All-India 
Epworth League Convention, written in as many tongues and 
dialects. I suppose no man on earth can read them all. The 
Epworth Leagues of India are enrolled under the same banner 
that our Methodist young people are marching under in this 
country. Not only are the young people's societies being organ- 
ized in all lands, but the students of the world also are engaged 
in a world-wide movement. In forty countries they are enrolled 
under the banners of Jesus Christ, and the various national move- 
ments are welded together in the World's Student Christian 
Federation. 
Providential These great forces are getting ready for something, and it 
would seem that they are being prepared for a great movement, 
a world-wide movement. Bishop Fowler said the other night 
that it is hard to interpret providential signs. So it is. But he 
also stated in substance that when Providence points its finger in 
a certain direction it is reasonable to suppose that Providence is 
leading in that direction. There are some providential marks 
about this young people's movement. It is not of men, it is of 
God. It came into being in a most providential way. Father 
Clark up in Portland one day organized a little society within four 
walls. Four years later a man, a cripple out in a Western State, 
in Illinois, organized a young people's society in our Church. 
Bishop Vincent and Dr. Hurlbut and others organized another in 
an Eastern State, and up in New England some one organized 
another; and so far as we know no one of these leaders knew 



Indications 



YOUNG PEOPLE AND MISSIONS 263 

anything about the existence of the other movements. Have you 
ever seen a genuine revival break out in your church ? Have you 
seen here a man and there a woman and over yonder a child 
touched with the spirit of prayer for the salvation of souls, and 
have you seen these forces come together in a providential way, 
with the result that a revival sweeps through the community ? So 
God in a providential way ordered this young people's movement. 
In this very city the various young people's organizations of our 
Church were brought together and a compact organization was 
formed. God called the Epworth League and the other young 
people's societies into being for something, and men are still ask- 
ing what that something is. 

There is another providential indication. For nine years after Work of 
the League was organized in this city it spent its time in extend- Extensl0n 
ing itself with marvelous rapidity — in extensive work, in 
thorough organization. If you read the literature of the Epworth 
League for the first nine years you will hardly find the word 
''missions" anywhere. There was no missionary committee, and 
practically no missionary work was being done by the organiza- 
tion. It was growing. I have in my home a little boy. He 
spends his time running around the room playing with this thing 
and that. He is content with almost any new toy ; he is growing, 
he is exercising. I shall be very much disappointed if some day 
the baby does not forget his toys and step out to take his part in 
the world movements of the day. The Epworth League grew 
rapidly, and when it had attained to young manhood it began to 
turn its attention to the great world enterprises in the midst of 
which it found itself. How well do I remember, four years ago 
and a little over, at the Cleveland Student Volunteer Convention, 
held in this very building, how the sainted Bishop Ninde talked 
with me about missionary work in the League ! The leaders were 
talking — Dr. W. I. Haven, the first general vice president, Mr. 
Willis Cooper, and others — of some practical plans for enlisting 
the interest of the League in missions. They asked me if I would 
have some part in the work. I didn't want to waste my time in 
organizing unnecessary machinery, so I went to Bishop Ninde, Bishop 
who was then president of the Epworth League, and said, ^jnvfctions 
"Bishop Ninde, do you really feel that an effort should be made 
to make the Epworth League missionary in spirit?" It was over 
in the Young Men's Christian Association building, and I remem- 



264 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Underlying 
Reasons 



A Part of the 
Church 



The Church 
of the Future 



ber he dropped his head deep in thought, and then he said : "Yes. 
Since I became president of the Epworth League I have been 
carefully studying the organization, and I am convinced that it is 
in danger of becoming a local self-improvement society; and 
unless it does something to take it out of itself it will die, by the 
law of the Gospel which says, 'Except a corn of wheat fall into 
the ground and die, it abideth by itself alone.' ' Thus it will be 
seen that after the League was thoroughly organized the leaders 
turned their faces to the world-wide field. The United Society 
of Christian Endeavor furnishes another striking example of the 
same providential movement. Father Clark in this building four 
years ago said that he had seen the Christian Endeavor Society 
write as a motto, first "Our City for Christ," then "Our State for 
Christ," and he was looking to the time when the great organiza- 
tion would write on every young people's society wall the motto, 
"Our World for Christ." 

But, after all, some may say these are merely surface signs and 
that their interpretation depends upon the attitude of the inter- 
preter. Are there not some underlying reasons why young people 
should be interested in missions ? I think there are. I shall men- 
tion a few: 

The young people are a part of the Church. They are not a 
church within a church. They are a part of the Methodism of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church. And if they are a part of the 
Church, and the cause of missions is the chief business of the 
Church, the young people must not only know that fact, but they 
must be bearing a part of the burden. 

Moreover, the young people are the Church of the future. This 
fact is so often commented upon that it is trite. But what does 
it mean? Simply this, stripped of all superfluous verbiage and 
reduced to its lowest terms: If we are on the eve of a great 
awakening, as many think we are, it means that it is not a moment 
too soon to begin to train the future leaders of our Church. If 
the world is to be evangelized in our generation, or in many 
generations — if there is before us the great movement that Bishop 
Thoburn predicts — we must begin now to train the leaders of that 
Church which soon must bear the burden and the heat of the 
day. 

And again, the young people are at an impressionable age. 
That is commonplace also ; but do you know that of my short life, 



YOUNG PEOPLE AND MISSIONS 265 

the five years which I have spent in working among the young The 
people have convinced me that the young people are the fertile Jj^ji 011 " 
soil for seed sowing; that you cannot expect the old people to 
give a large portion of their time to study. They have lost the 
habit of study. Some of them, if they have not formed the 
prayer habit in their youth, will not form it in later years, nor 
will they form scriptural habits of giving. Youth is the impres- 
sionable period, the time of life when, if ever, one responds to a 
great ideal. 

Once more, the young people have before them the longest The Longest 
time of service. If I had to choose between one of the gray- g lm ® 
haired brethren here and one of the young men full of life, as a 
missionary force, I would choose the young man, other things 
being equal, because he has a longer time of service. 

And again, "Despise not the days of youth." I went the other Ability to 
day to meet the cashier of the bank in New York where I do b^^iis 
business, and I was surprised to find that he was a very young 
man. I think he was younger than I am. I also met the first 
vice president of the bank, who was about my age. There is not 
a man in that bank, I think, who is older than I am. When I 
visit commercial concerns, as I do every time I get an opportunity, 
to study methods of successful organization and work, I find that 
those great commercial concerns are manned by young men, and 
business men are becoming convinced that young people are able 
to bear burdens when they are put upon them. For that reason 
alone the young people are worth cultivating. 

Then from the young people must come the army of volunteers. Prospective 
Thirty years of age is the dead line, practically, with outgoing unteers 
missionaries, for the boards do not, as a rule, send out men after 
they are thirty. We must be training an army of young men and 
young women for missionary service ; and if I had time I would 
express what is on my heart about the fact that the Church ought 
to give more attention than it does to the training and equipment 
of volunteers. Some day there will be a great dearth when we 
want new missionaries, unless we encourage the volunteers more 
than we do. It doesn't do for a man to go through college and 
theological seminary, and offer himself to our board and be turned 
down without adequate reason; aside from the hardship to that 
man himself, it discourages other young men from volunteering 
and equipping themselves. 



266 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Reflex 

Spiritual 

Influence 



How Enlist 
and Train 
the Young 
People 



An Appeal 
and a 
Challenge 



And finally — and this is reason enough, if there were not out- 
side of it and above it the thing I have most in my mind, the ring- 
ing command of our Lord and the unspeakable need of mission 
fields — the spiritual life of the young people themselves demands 
that they become missionary in spirit. The young people need 
above all things that reflex spiritual influence that comes from 
missionary life and purpose. Surely the spiritual need of the 
young people is in itself a sufficient reason for the vigorous prose- 
cution of the missionary movement among the young. 

But I must hasten. How shall we make this a great missionary 
army? There is no royal road. We need conventions like this; 
we need conferences and training schools of one sort or another ; 
we need more attention to missions in the press, doubtless. But 
our Church might just as well settle itself down to this basis, that 
it is going to be a prolonged campaign of education. One of the 
leaders of our Church said the other day that he didn't believe in 
this educational campaign in the Epworth League. "What we 
need," said he, "is money, and we need it now." In my judgment 
our Church has too long proceeded upon that basis. You can't 
arouse the young people in a permanent way until they are in- 
formed. What the young people want and what the Church needs 
is missionary education, and I believe that our young people to- 
day are in danger of taking up missions as a fad — as a fashionable 
thing; and if they do the seed will fall on shallow ground and 
soon be scorched by the rays of the sun. It is very inspiring to 
cry, "The evangelization of the world in this generation." It is 
prosaic to go back home and talk about missions and organize 
study classes and begin the long, tedious process which is in- 
volved in an educational campaign, but as unto the bow the string 
is, so unto world-wide evangelization is thoroughgoing mission- 
ary education. 

But I am sure that I shall not have sounded the note that should 
be sounded in dealing with this subject if I do not say that these 
facts which we have been considering constitute both an appeal 
and a challenge to the Church. As young people we appeal to 
you, the adult members of the Church, to deal faithfully with us. 
We are young, we are inexperienced, we lack knowledge. We 
are lured by those things which most appeal to rich young blood. 
But, after all, in the quiet moments, if we know ourselves, we 
wish not to spend these golden days in idleness, nor do we desire 



YOUNG PEOPLE AND MISSIONS 267 

to miss the great opportunity that comes, and comes but once. 
We want to do the best things and the greatest things. And upon 
you as pastors, as leaders, as parents, and friends, rests the great 
responsibility for our instruction. I pity the pastor who, to para- 
phrase the words of Cuthbert Hall, condemns his young people to 
a life of provincialism in an age of catholicity. We appeal to you 
to deal with us faithfully, as a father deals with his child. And 
with that we issue a challenge. Some of us know something of 
the power of the missionary idea. We know it is not a subject to 
trifle with. We know how it can uproot the hoary religions of a 
continent. We have seen it tear homes asunder and send the 
dearest of the family to the uttermost part of the earth. I remem- 
ber how four years ago, on one of those seats on that side of this 
platform [indicating], I fought the greatest battle of my life. 
For long years I had resisted the Spirit of Christ and refused to 
consider the missionary call; and when I said, "O Lord, I will 
give it up and go anywhere you want me to go," this whole 
armory was filled with glory. We know something of the power 
of the missionary idea. And I want to say, and I believe I truly 
represent the young people of the churches and colleges, that if 
you as a Church will rise to a great thing, and will place before 
us what Jesus Christ placed before us, if you will call upon us to 
go out and to attempt great things for God, we will follow you 
anywhere. 

A prophet who, I suppose, has founded more Christian and A Prophecy 
missionary movements than any other man in this country said 
not long ago in my hearing that he had seen three great stages in 
this young people's movement : first, the organization of the col- 
leges and young people's societies in this country; second, the 
transplanting of these organizations to the other side of the water ; 
and, third, the stage of the work we are just now entering upon — 
the making of these young people intensely and truly missionary 
in spirit. And then he said, with prophetic fire, "The next stage, 
the fourth stage, will be the last. It will be the shout of triumph, 
the hanging up of the battered armor, and the proclamation that 
the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord 
and his Christ." O, our Father, hasten that day ! It will come, it 
will come, if we are faithful and do what we can to promote the 
kingdom, because behind us in all power thou art, and there is 
nothing too hard for God ! 



268 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Compara- 
tively Few 
Being Won 
for Christ 



Our Eange of 
Influence in 
Non-Christian 
Lands 



REASONS WHY THE HOME CHURCH MUST 
GO FORWARD 

Mr. John R. Mott 

The Church must go forward in the foreign missionary enter- 
prise because of the comparatively small number of people who 
are being won in heathen and pagan lands to become disciples of 
Jesus Christ. When we compare the number who are being 
drawn into the kingdom of Christ at the present time, with the 
number being reached two generations ago, or one generation 
ago, or even ten years ago, there is very much indeed to encourage 
us. When we think of what is being achieved in certain of the 
great mission fields of God, like Japan, the Fu-kien Province of 
China, and the Northwest Provinces of India, our faith is greatly 
stimulated. When we observe what has been accomplished by 
the Spirit of God in these difficult foreign fields, in contrast with 
what is being done in more favored fields in the United States, 
we find sufficient cause to stimulate us with the desire to see more 
accomplished in our own land. But when, on the other hand, we 
remind ourselves of the vast numbers who are not being reached 
with the message of Christ in the non-Christian nations, with the 
number who might easily be won for him, and, therefore, who 
should be won for him, we recognize keenly and painfully the 
great need of a forward movement of evangelization on behalf of 
the multitudinous inhabitants of the non-Christian world. 

The home Church must go forward because of the large number 
of people within the range of our influence in all the non-Christian 
nations where we are working, for bringing the message of Christ 
to whom we are in a very special sense responsible. Think of the 
tens of thousands in our schools and colleges on the mission field. 
Think of the multitudes who are thronging our hospitals and 
dispensaries. Note the vast number who are being influenced by 
the printed page as the Spirit of God works out through it. 
Recognize the even greater number who are frequenting the 
preaching places, or upon whose lives is being brought to bear 
the power of Christian personality through individual effort I 
am fully persuaded that in the non-Christian countries there are 
^vhat would amount in the aggregate to a great multitude who 
are inquirers as the result of our missionary work, but who have 



WHY THE CHURCH MUST GO FORWARD 269 

not yet been related to Christ as their Saviour, and also of those 
whom we might term secret disciples, but who do not yet have 
the clearness of faith or sufficient courage to avow themselves as 
disciples of Jesus Christ. A forward movement, beginning in the 
home Church, is necessary in order to draw a great body of these 
who are more than halfway, who are within the range of our 
immediate influence, to whom we have special access, into the 
kingdom of our Saviour. It is poor business and poorer church- 
manship for us to build up great institutions and extensive 
agencies on the mission fields and yet to underman them to such 
an extent that we are unable to reap the legitimate fruits which 
we have a right to expect if we were working these plants as we 
might. 

The Church must go forward because of the operation of the The Forces of 
forces of evil at the present time. After spending some fourteen ^J rk re a 
years working among the young men, not only in the universities, 
but in the troubled heart of the great American cities, I am pre- 
pared to appreciate the force of the temptations of young men of 
America. And yet I wish to go on record as saying that we do 
not at home know what temptation is in contrast with the working 
of temptation in the non-Christian nations. Gambling is rife in 
America, among the poor and the rich, but we cannot yet say of 
America as we could of every republic south of us, or of China, 
that gambling is a national contagion. Intemperance is a mighty 
evil in this country, but in the judgment of some of the most 
acute observers and those who have had largest opportunities to 
learn the facts the most frightful ravages of the drink demon are 
those wrought in the port cities of Asia, Africa, and South 
America. Moreover, we know of no evil in America that is 
comparable, so far as the numbers affected by it are concerned, to 
that of the opium curse in China. Different estimates were given 
to me in China, but taking the most conservative I would call 
your attention to the awful fact that probably not less than fifteen 
per cent of the young men of China are addicted to the opium 
habit. The year before I made my first visit to China there was 
expended in that country on native and imported opium $220,- 
000,000 gold — enough to feed that vast nation twelve days, worse 
than wasted, because it is eating like gangrene into one of the 
best races of Asia. 

What shall I say of impurity? Take Japan, for instance. I 



270 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Ravages of 
Impurity 



Rationalism 

and 

Materialism 



Magnitude, 
Enterprise, 
and Activity 
of these Evils 



know of no country where this vice is so attractive, so accessible, 
so economical, so safe, and therefore so deadly as in Japan. Is 
it to be wondered at that I found young men everywhere in that 
land going like sheep to the slaughter? I do not trust myself to 
speak of the ravages of impurity in China. One missionary said 
to me there were thousands of words and phrases in the Chinese 
language expressive of the baser passions and vices. What 
charnel houses and whited sepulchers must be the inner lives of 
these people, to require such infinitely varied expressions of the 
hidden depths. 

In India with my own eyes I have seen the nautch girls in the 
great temple at one of the three most sacred seats of Hinduism 
plying their awful traffic. Moreover, I had my attention called, 
on my recent visit to India, to that law, which still stands on the 
Indian statute books, which prohibits indecent pictures and repre- 
sentations, but in which there is specified one significant exception 
— "except in connection with temples and other places of religious 
worship." A friend of mine who was born in the capital of a 
native state in India said to me not long since that the ruler of 
that native state had offered prizes to the young men of the city 
who excelled in certain forms of impurity. 

We talk of rationalism in the German universities. I have seen 
something of its dire influence there. But rationalism and 
materialistic philosophy are more prevalent and deadly in their 
influence in the universities of India and Japan than in the univer- 
sities of Germany and of Holland. I do not dwell on the avarice 
and the gross materialism which exert such a dominating influence 
in the Far East. Nor do I speak of great evils like the system of 
caste and ancestor worship, nor of the dwarfing and deadening 
effects of incomplete religions like Buddhism, Mohammedanism, 
and Hinduism. 

Consider these evils. Note their magnitude ; it should startle 
us. Observe their enterprise ; it should challenge our admiration. 
Look at their activity ; they take no vacations. Notice well also 
their vigor and their deadly cruelty. They are after the life. The 
time has come when the Church should rise in her might and 
declare uncompromising warfare against these evils in all their 
forms. Why should we not resolve here this night, with greater 
earnestness than in the past, to fight these evils and sins until we 
die ? Everything in the world which has caused suffering, sorrow, 



WHY THE CHURCH MUST GO FORWARD 2^1 

pain, loss, and death is traceable to sin. Let us, therefore, bestir 
ourselves and go forth to help our tempted brothers in their battle, 
their losing battle apart from Jesus Christ. 

The Church must go forward also because of the abounding Abounding 
resources which she possesses. We have a membership now, ^ eS p U 5 ces , of 
including probationers, of something like two and three quarters 
millions on this continent alone. Put that in contrast with the 
few thousands who constitute the small, unacknowledged, and 
despised sect which on the day of Pentecost went forth to evan- 
gelize the Roman empire. Or put in contrast with it, if you 
please, the small Moravian Church and recount her missionary 
history, to be greatly stimulated by our own shortcomings as 
well as by their achievements. We have been reminded to-night 
that there are about three millions of scholars and teachers in 
our Sunday schools. What an asset in itself, as we think of the 
problem of the evangelization of the world! Likewise we have 
been told about the growing membership of the Epworth League, 
now reaching up toward two millions. What possibilities we have 
seen in the considerations which have been laid before us con- 
cerning the present and future of this organization. We have 
130 colleges, universities, theological seminaries, and other insti- 
tutions of higher learning in the Methodist Episcopal Church in 
the United States ; and they have at present about 40,000 
students. Suppose we do not allow for any growth in the number 
of students in these institutions, nor take into account the 
Methodist Episcopal students in the State institutions of this Possible 
country, there will still go forth from these 130 Methodist insti- Mlssl0naries 
tutions of the Northern Church not less than 400,000 students in 
our generation. Suppose that only one half of them are to 
graduate as Christians — we know the proportion will be larger 
than that — it would take only one per cent of the number of them 
who are to go cut as Christians to furnish more than the quota 
assigned to the Methodist Episcopal Church in the total number 
required to bring the knowledge of Jesus Christ to the attention 
of all people in our generation, according to the estimates of con- 
servative missionaries. Then we have the Student Young Men's 
Christian Association, in which this Church should be peculiarly 
interested, because the largest contingent in this great inter- 
denominational movement that unites some forty divisions of the 
Church of Jesus Christ is the Methodist Episcopal contingent. 



2J2 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

The possibilities of this great student movement which unites the 
future leaders of Church and State, so far as they are to be Chris- 
tian leaders, are simply limitless in a day of large combinations 
and opportunities. 

Wealth of What about the wealth of the Methodist Episcopal Church ? 

the Church The b es t estimates that I have been able, to discover indicate that 
the Protestant Christians of the United States in the year 1900 
must have possessed twenty-three billions of dollars. If our 
Church had its due proportion, we are abundantly able to support 
our contingent, and also the plant and agencies necessary to 
sustain such an enlarged force of conquest. Taking all Protestant 
Christians, one might say that if they would give one two-hun- 
dredth of their personal and real property it would roll up a mis- 
sionary fund of over $100,000,000, in contrast with a little over 
$4,000,000 given by the Protestant Churches of the United States 
last year. Or, to put it otherwise, if Protestant Christians of the 
United States would give one fiftieth of the increase in their 
wealth year by year it would far more than sustain the increased 
number of missionaries required, according to the missionaries' 
estimate, to spread this network of evangelization over the world 
and support it with commensurate institutional plants, and home 
agencies to sustain the work. 

Gifts that If one pastor in Methodism out of every seven caught the vision 

Ought to Be an( j (jecjfje^ to make his church a living link church, that is, a 
church supporting its own representative on the foreign field, or 
the equivalent thereof, we could send out more than our con- 
tingent of the volunteers who should go forth in this generation. 
Or, if several pastors would unite and each group support one of 
these missionaries we would far surpass our quota. Or, if each 
member of the Methodist Episcopal Church would give two dol- 
lars a year to this work we would roll up a fund that would enable 
us to do far more than our share in the work of making Christ 
known to all creatures in our day. If the members of our 
churches, Sunday schools, and Epworth Leagues, making all 
allowance for duplicates, were each to give one dollar a year we 
would be in a position to do the same thing. We have the financial 
ability, we have the men, we have the organizations, we have the 
methods, and I am constrained to believe that we have the vision 
of the possibility of doing our full share toward evangelizing the 
world in our day, which is a great asset in itself. And then let 



WHY THE CHURCH MUST GO FORWARD 273 

us, in a conference like this, not forget that we have a mighty 
factor in the spirit of Methodism. It is inconceivable that a 
Methodist should apologize for the work of world-wide missions, 
because in so doing he apologizes for its founder, for its history, 
for its spirit which has wrought so many miracles on this conti- 
nent, and for its Lord. 

Think also of the resources on the foreign field. In the Resources on 
Methodist Episcopal Church alone we have 1,800 native preachers, ^eid° reign 
and hundreds of teachers and other Christian workers. We have 
a membership, including probationers, of over 190,000. We have 
sixty-four colleges and high schools that are training up a native 
army without which it is an idle dream to talk of evangelizing the 
world in one generation or in many generations. 

Moreover, let us not omit the divine resources. This missionary The Divine 
movement is not so much an enterprise of any one particular Resources 
Church as it is God's enterprise. Jesus Christ is still at the right 
hand of God. He is our leader, and with him resides all power 
in heaven and on earth. The Holy Spirit is as able to shake 
mightily whole communities as in the days of St. Peter and St. 
John. The word of God still has dynamic and regenerating 
power. Faith is still able to remove mountains. Macedonian 
visions are yet vouchsafed unto men. Prayer is able to overcome 
the world. 

The Church simply must move forward, because the time has The Law of 
come to enter into the heritage which God has prepared as the leaping 811 
result of the working of his unchanging laws. Among these is 
the law of sowing and reaping. There has been an immense 
amount of seed-sowing in the non-Christian nations. Any careful 
traveler must have noted the thoroughness, painstaking zeal, and 
self-denial which have gone into this seed-sowing process. It is 
the law of God that where the seed is properly sown and properly 
watered and matured there shall come a time to reap. Just return- 
ing from a second journey through the great mission fields, I 
bring the impression, which is far more vivid than it was on the 
occasion of my first journey six years ago, that the time has come 
to reap. I do not know a field of which it is not literally true 
that if we to-day put in the sickle we can gather sheaves unto life 
eternal. Bishop Thoburn has used language of prophecy on this 
platform that must have impressed us profoundly. It mightily 
moves young men like myself to hear one of his age and large 
18 



274 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Law of 
Prayer 



The Law of 
Self-sacrifice 



The Martyr 
Church in 
North China 



experience with the difficulties say that he expects, before his eyes 
shall close in death, if our Church does her duty, to see one 
million gathered into the fold of our Lord Jesus Christ. It ought 
to stimulate every one of us to have more vision, more persever- 
ance, and more faithfulness as we look down through the years. 
I myself believe that his vision is not an exaggerated picture of 
what we may witness if we are true to this present opportunity. 

Another law which has been working is that of prayer. I like 
to think of prayer as a law, just as certain in its working as any 
of the other great forces. Prayer is not a form ; it is a force — the 
greatest force being wielded to-day. The prayers of Christendom 
have been focused upon the non-Christian fields with more and 
more definiteness and earnestness. This is notably true of the 
last three or four years. We could give many evidences of this. 
But in vain does the Church go to her knees on behalf of the 
martyr Church in North China, for example, or on behalf of other 
portions of the non-Christian world, unless at the same time she 
combines works with her faith and seeks to enter into the heritage 
which God has prepared as a result of her own faithfulness in 
prayer. 

Then there is the law of self-sacrifice. I do not believe that 
all the sacrifices are made on the mission field. Hidden away in 
all our churches are men and women who are just as truly deny- 
ing themselves as are workers on the foreign field. They are the 
salt of the home churches. Notwithstanding this, the volume of 
sacrifice is undoubtedly greater on the foreign field than at home. 
The very act of leaving home and breaking the ties that bind us 
here is in itself a great reach in the realm of self-sacrifice. The 
missionary goes out to face discouragement, opposition, misunder- 
standing, loneliness ; to subject his nervous organism to a strain 
the like of which we know not save in very few positions on the 
home field; also to subject his sensibilities to influences that cut 
into the finest grain of life and tend to abridge life itself. He 
comes to know what it is to die daily. One of the two greatest 
privileges I have ever had in my life came to me about a year 
ago this month, that of visiting North China. I had planned not 
to go there, on account of the recent troubles, but a special depu- 
tation waited on me in Japan and urged me to go. While in 
Peking I met in the old theater of the nephew of the empress 
dowager the remnant of the martyr Church — over three hundred 



WHY THE CHURCH MUST GO FORWARD 275 

native preachers, teachers, and Bible women and other lay work- 
ers. As I heard their narratives as to how they had stood the 
persecution; as I was reminded that there was probably not a 
Chinese in that room who in the recent massacre had not lost . y 
friends, relatives, or members of his immediate family, I received 
an inspiration that I am sure will abide with me to my dying day ; 
and I became ashamed of the degree of Christianity which I pos- 
sessed. I wondered whether I and those associated with me at 
home would be able to stand the strain of persecution as these 
Chinese Christians had stood it. The sufferings and sacrifices of 
the Chinese Christians have made possible a marvelous harvest. 
But in vain is it to quote Tertullian that "the blood of the martyrs 
is the seed of the Church," unless the Church at home and abroad 
with clear vision and large faith goes forward to enter into the 
heritage thus prepared. We should heed the closing phrase of 
the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, "Apart from us they should 
not be made perfect." The martyrs of North China, the two 
hundred missionaries and members of their families and the 
fifteen thousand Chinese Christians who there laid down their 
lives for Jesus Christ, will not be made perfect in their influence 
for the evangelization of that great region unless we with prompt- 
ness and resolution press our wonderful advantage. 

The Church must go forward because of the dangers which are Dangers of 

sure to follow if we do not have a great advance movement. Look Hesi tancy 

& and Delay 

first at some of the dangers which will be experienced on the 

mission field. One is that some of our missionaries will break 

down if we do not speedily send them reinforcements. I have 

been in scores of Methodist missionary homes in the last few 

years, and I do not recall one of them where the impression was 

not made very distinctly on my mind and heart that our force of 

workers was undermanned and that they were carrying burdens 

too heavy to be borne. Then there is the danger that we will 

discourage and depress both the missionaries and the native 

workers by letting them stand in front of ripe fields and not 

enabling them to reap, by letting them stand before open doors 

and not making it possible for them to enter. There is the danger 

also that thousands of those who are practically ready to close in 

on Christ will lapse, that their last state will become worse than 

the first, and that they will thus become stumbling-blocks in the 

way of a greater work of God later. And we must not forget 



2j6 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Sin of 
Neglect 



An Appeal to 
the Heroic 
Needed 



Interrelation 
of Home and 
Foreign 
Work 



Results of 
Disobedience 



that by not having a forward movement at this particular time 
we are mortgaging the future and hindering the achievements of 
the next generation. 

What are the perils to the Church at home? All men need 
Christ. We owe Christ to all men. To know our duty and do it 
not is sin. Continuance in the sin of neglect and wrongdoing 
weakens the life and arrests the growth. Neglect to go forward, 
therefore, means spiritual atrophy. Another peril is widespread 
hypocrisy. Archbishop Whately said, "If our religion is not true 
we ought to change it ; if it is true we are bound to propagate 
what we believe to be the truth." There is no middle ground. 
The members of the Methodist Episcopal Church should either 
change their creed or devote themselves far more earnestly to 
the world's evangelization. 

There is also the peril that we shall yield to the dangers of 
ease, selfishness, luxury, and low ideals. I speak for the young 
men of the Church when I say that they need something to call 
out the best energies of their minds and hearts, something that 
appeals to the heroic and the self-denying in them, something 
that will lead them to depend less upon themselves and more 
upon God. A task sufficient for all these purposes is the evan- 
gelization of the world in our own day. 

Furthermore, we shall not have the hitting power that our 
Church ought to have on the home field, unless we do far more 
for the foreign field. No better thing could happen on behalf of 
our great city evangelization schemes, and on behalf of the reach- 
ing of the rural districts of this country, than to have a great 
uprising, the like of which we have never known, on behalf of 
the foreign fields. The history of the Church teaches clearly and 
conclusively that the missionary epochs have been those which 
have most stimulated and purified the Church on the home field. 

The most serious of all the perils to the Church at home is 
that the largest manifestation of the Spirit of Jesus Christ is 
withheld from those who do not fully obey. Have you noticed, 
in the New Testament, that the gift of the Holy Spirit is in- 
variably associated with the spreading of the knowledge of Jesus 
Christ? The Holy Spirit is not given as an end in himself, but 
as a means for testimony and witness-bearing on behalf of Jesus 
Christ. Therefore, if we would have the mighty current of the 
energies of the Spirit of God coursing through the Church let us 



WHY THE CHURCH MUST GO FORWARD 277 

come out into a larger obedience to the great missionary command 
of Jesus Christ. 

The Church must go forward because of the urgency of the Urgency 
missionary task. Too many of our organizations and churches Missionary 
as well as individual members are planning and working as Task 
though they thought they had two or more generations in which 
to do the particular work for which God is going to hold them 
responsible. I believe in building for the future, but am I not 
right in saying that the best way to build for the future is to 
serve our own generation by the will of God? We are living 
in a time of unexampled crisis, if we may trust the testimony of 
the best observers of the non-Christian nations. They tell us 
that if we fail to do our duty in this generation we jeopardize 
our opportunities and prospects in the second and third genera- A Time of 
tions. Moreover, it is a time of marvelous opportunity. The opportunity 
world is better known and more accessible; its need is more 
articulate and intelligible, and our ability to meet that need is 
far greater than ever before. The forces of evil are not deferring 
their operations until the next generation. Materialism in Japan 
says, "Let me do as I like in that country in this generation, and 
I am not concerned about the second." Likewise speaks avarice 
in China. Rationalism says, "Let me have the right of way in the 
Indian universities for the next ten years, and I am not so much 
concerned about the succeeding twenty or thirty years." Lust 
says, "Let me go unbridled in the Turkish empire a little longer." 
Why should not the Church of Jesus Christ rise up and do in this 
generation the work that can only be done in this generation ? If 
the non-Christians of this generation are ever to learn of Christ, 
it must be through the Christians of this generation. The Chris- 
tians who are dead cannot teach them. Obviously, each 
generation of Christians must evangelize its own generation of 
non-Christians, if they are ever to be evangelized. 

There is an element of immediacy and urgency in the final The Last 
command of Christ which we are prone to overlook. Let us so J° Christ 
plan and work as though we had but one generation in which to 
plan and work. And let us so act that if a sufficient number of 
the other members of the Church would act with like conscien- 
tiousness, earnestness, and perseverance we should before our 
generation closes make the knowledge of Jesus Christ accessible 
to every creature. In view of the awful need of men apart from 



278 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

Jesus Christ; in view of the infinite possibilities of lives related 
to Christ as Saviour and Lord ; in view of the impending crisis ; 
in view of the urgency of the situation on every hand; in view 
of the conditions favoring a great forward movement; in view 
of the dangers of anything less than a forward movement; in 
view of the constraining memories of the cross of Christ and the 
love wherewith he hath loved you and me, "Let us," to use the 
language of Alexander Duff, the great Indian statesman, "arise 
and resolve at whatever cost of self-denial, to give ourselves in 
right earnest as we have hitherto not done to the stupendous task 
of supplanting the three thousand years' consolidated empire of 
Satan by the complete establishment of Messiah's reign." Let 
us resolve that, so far as in us lies, 

" The work which centuries might have done 
Shall crowd the hour of setting sun." 



INTRODUCTION TO THE FINANCIAL 
SESSION 

The Rev. John F. Goucher, D.D. 

An Adequate As we enter upon the special service of worship which is now 
oopera ion ^ e f ore us j desire to make two requests. The first is that no one, 
except under the most urgent necessity, will leave this hall until 
this act of worship is closed. The second is that as participants 
in this service every person will be continually in the spirit and 
act of prayer. We are facing a crisis to-night; not a crisis in 
this Convention, nor a crisis in missions, but a crisis in each 
individual life. With increased knowledge, broadened vision, 
and sympathies profoundly stirred, we must register such coopera- 
tion as will measure our ability, or we shall be guilty of that 
"withholding which doth impoverish." 

If sympathy is divorced from high resolve and appropriate 
action, if it expends itself as an emotion instead of functioning as 
a motive for fuller ministry, it is enervating, a dissipation which 
atrophies the heart and leaves the life more callous and selfish. 
The result of this conference upon each one of us will be deter- 
mined by the response we make to the object which it has 
set forth. 

The program has proceeded thus far with a logical movement, 



INTRODUCTION TO THE FINANCIAL SESSION 279 

bringing us face to face with duty. Opening with an historical Face to Face 

background, it has considered the problems of the home field, wi ^ 1 Duty 

and with broadening vision, ranging world-wide, it has set forth 

the open doors everywhere found, even to the ends of the earth. 

It has discussed and illustrated class and individual opportunity 

and efficiency, and now the time for argument and appeal is past 

and each one of us is facing a personal obligation to act. 

We earnestly entreat you to raise your hearts in prayer, not to A Time for 
some power away off and invisible, but in the hush of this quiet jJJJJJ ** 
hour lift your hearts to the Christ who gave his life for us and who 
points to the unchurched millions for whom he died and whom 
he loves with an unutterable love. As he looks down into the 
depth of your heart, look up into his yearning eyes and make 
responsive answer to his challenge. Answer the Christ if you 
consent; answer the Christ if you refuse. Let this be a season 
of prayer, a season of action. We face a gracious, blessed, ex- 
ceptional opportunity so to invest of that which we hold as 
stewards of the manifold grace of God as to send a thrill out 
into the loneliest places of the earth, beget confidence in those 
whose faith has been shaken, carry hope to the millions who are 
in darkness, strengthen the Church at home, secure the enrich- 
ment of the divine approval upon our own hearts, and improve 
our qualifications for better service. 

The missionary collection of our Church will show an increase The Financial 
for this year of about one hundred thousand dollars. That will j**** 8 ^ 0ur 
be absorbed in restoring the eight per cent cut of last year, and 
will be insufficient properly to maintain the work as it is. Our 
Missionary Society has been able to do practically nothing for 
fifteen years or more toward properly equipping its agencies, 
liquidating debts in the foreign fields, or acquiring property at 
the strategic points for our rapidly increasing work. As Dr. 
Leonard showed in his paper Tuesday afternoon, these urgent 
demands necessitate the expenditure within the next twelve 
months of one million dollars. I can hardly ask this Convention 
to make an offering of one million dollars, for that would put the 
rest of the Church, those who are not here, at a serious disad- 
vantage; but one fourth of that amount, or two hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars, is a minimum offering with which we 
should worship God to-night. This sum is suggested as a A Suggested 
minimum for various considerations. Let me indicate two: Sum 



28o 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Proving 
Leadership 



First, this Convention has present, as properly enrolled delegates, 
one fourth of all the presiding elders of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. These show, by their presence and interest in the great 
work of the world's evangelization, that they are among the most 
wide-awake, open-hearted, loyal, efficient, and representative of 
the entire body. They are able to pledge their districts for at 
least one fourth of the million dollars and then go home and 
prove their leadership by raising the same. Second, one hundred 
dollars is an appropriate unit for a centennial offering. That 
would require of the giver only two dollars per week for one 
year. There is scarcely a delegate present who could not as a 
special act of worship by extra work or wise sacrifice, give that 
amount between now and the end of 1903. Many could, I doubt 
not will, give multiples of this unit according to their several 
ability and their Christlikeness of spirit. This conference includes 
twenty-five hundred persons to whom delegates' tickets have been 
issued. If each delegate would give one hundred dollars, that 
would make the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. 

Let me ask you to keep in the spirit of prayer, to give your 
presence and your prayers to the close of the service, if you can 
give nothing else, and I believe God will work among us so 
mightily that this shall be remembered as possibly the most 
gracious hour thus far in our history. 

Look at the cards which have been placed in your hands, take 
your pencils, raise your hearts to God, and so write that you may 
have his approval upon your sacrifice, upon this expression of 
your devotion, upon your cooperation with him in the great work 
of the world's redemption. To be joint heirs with Jesus Christ 
we must be identified with him in the antecedents of victory, as 
well as in the consequences of victory. 
Pledges Made [Beginning with a conditional pledge of $100,000 made by 
Bishop Thoburn for a friend, this pledge to be binding provided 
another $100,000 should be raised that night, the taking of sub- 
scriptions proceeded with great enthusiasm. Reports of pledges 
made at the parallel meetings in the Epworth Memorial and Jen- 
nings Avenue Methodist Churches were given from time to time. 
Subscriptions totaling $300,700 were made on this occasion, this 
amount being increased later to about $335,000.] 



"beloved, if god so loved us" 281 

"BELOVED, IF GOD SO LOVED US" 

The Rev. William F. McDowell, D.D. 

St. Paul was the apostolic logician, but even St. Paul never The High 
did anything finer than this. This is the high logic of a mystic. ffi ic . of a 
The conclusions of the men who see with both mind and heart 
are not always comfortable. They put or see so much in the two 
premises that the conclusion is certain to be overwhelmingly per- 
sonal. This logic is correct, but not academic. There are in the 
premise a world-movement of love, a heavenly Father's yearning 
heart, an angel song above the hills, a babe's low cry in a manger, 
a divine-human life, a cross on a low hill outside the gate, an 
open grave, and an upper room. All this John knew. There are 
in the conclusion a new humanity, prophets and apostles, a new 
word on men's lips, a new temper in men's hearts, brotherhood 
between hostile peoples, hope for hopeless children, light for those 
who sit in darkness, hospitals, orphanages, and schools. And far 
off men and women will see this premise and themselves get into Premise and 
the conclusion, and we shall see with our eyes William Carey, 
Henry Martyn, Melville Cox, James Hannington, Alexander 
Duff, Coleridge Patteson, William Butler, and Isabella Thoburn. 
They are the conclusion of the old mystic's high logic. He puts 
God's love, as seen in Jesus Christ, into the premise, and man's 
love for man into the conclusion. This is not abstract nor 
academic. St. John was an old man when he wrote it, but he 
must have had a strange thrill as he remembered what he had 
seen. He must have lifted up his old head again in holy joy, 
remembering that once it had lain on the heart of immortal 
love. 

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and The Great 
sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. "His Son, the 
propitiation, our sins." Then follows the great deduction: 
"Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." 
And if has not the force of a question, but an assertion. We use 
the eternal interrogation, the apostles the everlasting affirmation. 
Inspired by God's example, saved by God's grace; sustained by 
God's love, enabled by God's power, they proposed to do for all 
men what God had done for them, namely, love them. And that 
is the final definition of Christian missions : Some people whom 



282 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A Remark 

Almost 

Apostolic 



A Gray 
Mixture of 
Selfishness 



God loves love other people whom God also loves. Love made 
the mystic's logic possible ; love is the outcome of the logic which 
is no longer mystic, but practical. We draw near the formal close 
of this conference with new enthusiasm, new and larger knowl- 
edge of fields and methods, majestic purposes and noble plans, 
and all this is vital and well. But the imperial word with which 
we must close is not machinery, nor method, nor money, but love. 
Christian missions call for machinery, methods, and money, more 
and better than we have ever had, but all these are the means to 
the end that the love of God may be shed abroad. We define the 
movement in terms of this holy affection. 

Cardinal Manning and Henry George were talking together, 
and the cardinal said, "I love men because Jesus loved them." Mr. 
George replied, "And I love Jesus because he loved men." The 
cardinal's remark was almost apostolic. Blessed be the man or 
the Church whose conduct is as apostolic as that remark. For, 
after all, this does give us the pure motive. Emerson once said, 
"What you are speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say." And 
again, "Men do not ask so much what you do as what it is that 
makes you do it." Nothing so glorifies or so spoils the deed as 
the rnotive for doing it. The heathen has not been without some 
ground for suspicion of the Christian motives and the Christian 
Church. He has sometimes suspected us of being a trifle over- 
apostolic. You remember how St. Paul said, "I seek not yours, 
but you." The heathen, keen, shrewd, and observing, has heard 
so much of the political and commercial advantages of missions 
that he might easily imagine that the new apostles seek not only 
him, but incidentally as much of his as might come naturally. 
But love never seeks her own, and the true missionary does not 
aim to set the wires of commerce singing, but to awaken the song 
of the rejoicing angels. So St. John's sentence had reference not 
only to the quantity, not chiefly to the quantity, of God's love, 
but to its quality. The value of love depends upon its source and 
its kind quite as much as upon its size. 

The most discouraging thing in life is the gray mixture of 
selfishness in the motives behind the deeds of good men. The 
patriotism which seeks titles, and pensions, and personal monu- 
ments in the public square ; the benevolence that gives large gifts 
for large praise and noisy gratitude; the philanthropy that 
strenuously exacts recognition and reward are all of a piece with 



"beloved, if god so loved us" 283 

that hideous old theology that made God appear to do good to 
men that they might be induced to adore him in return. And the 
missionary movement that gets itself mixed up with the pride of 
statistics, the lust of denominational glory or personal triumph, is 
no longer Christian. It has lost its apostolic basis and color. If 
God so loved us, in quantity and in kind; so loved us that he 
gave without measure and without limit; so loved us that he 
reckoned not the return; so loved us that he gave not looking 
for payment ; so loved us as children and not hirelings, then we 
ought also like this to love one another. Merciless, pitiless, re- 
lentless logic from which we cannot escape ! Sharp, burning, All-compre- 
exacting logic which leaves no place for indifference or selfishness t^j^ 
or hate ! Rare, holy, divine logic whose symbol is the cross, whose 
living definition is the Christ, we who have not half cared for one 
another bow down in shame and will love one another; we who 
have much less than half cared for our kin beyond the sea, we 
will love them, love them also. Matchless old mystic, you are 
right. In the face of Christ we ought, and in the grace of Christ 
we will. 

That motive will be pure enough for missions to live in ; it will A Large 
also be large enough for missions to move in. It is pure enough 
to see through, and large enough to float in. And it takes lots 
of room. "How much space do you require?" said an unbeliever 
to a Christian. "I must have an empire," was the quick response ; 
"give me less than that and I shall smother." The apostles knew 
many things, by divine grace. They dealt in big terms and big 
ideas. When they talked about eternal life they meant something 
both noble and lasting. They were familiar with the ideas of 
both quality and quantity. Following their Master, they believed 
in leaven and in a whole lump leavened. They not only had the 
fine view, but the world view. Salvation in Christ was not only 
good, but abundant. It was quite in character for them to turn 
the world upside down. Naturally this rare old mystic gets the 
idea of size into this verse about motives. Maybe he had seen 
life fail at that point, as we have. For many a man fails, not 
because his motives are impure, but just because they are small. 
The thing is good enough, but not big enough. The dewdrop is 
quite as pure as the ocean, and the dewdrop is a thing of surpass- 
ing beauty; but it takes an ocean to float the Oregon. In an 
ocean she can run swiftly around the world and do her splendid 



284 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Where Small 
Motives 
Break Down 



The Bound- 
lessness of 
God's Love 



work for freedom; in a millpond she is helpless and only ruins 
herself. "We shall fight a hundred battles and never see anything 
finer than the Oregon was on that morning at Santiago/' said 
Fighting Bob of the Iowa. But it takes an ocean to float such 
a ship. 

Smaller motives have had their influence and place. We have 
tried to do good to men because we pitied them. Our lot was 
better than theirs, our history superior to theirs. And pity is 
fine. It works well into a missionary hymn, and it sometimes 
secures a dollar. It is not far from love under certain condi- 
tions. But some day the prosperous heathen, the educated 
heathen, the satisfied heathen comes our way and tells us that his 
religion is as good as ours and that he and his people care for 
none of our pity. They want only our recognition and admira- 
tion. And pity fails and our enterprise is on the rocks. The 
water was pure, but shallow. It takes an ocean. 

Or we have tried to do good to men because we admired them. 
With much scorn we have repudiated the old and what we called 
the false theology with its wretched doctrine of the depravity of 
men. And we have grown eloquent over the essential goodness 
in men; the divine spark, smothered and smoldering often, but 
still a divine spark; the covered image of God under the worst 
of appearances. We have said smooth words about sin, calling 
the ugly thing by lovely names, talking about imperfect develop- 
ment, unhappy ancestry, and unfortunate environment. It is 
easy to do all that in one's study or under the influence of poetry 
and generous impulses. There is truth enough in it to start us on 
our way. But at close range with men all the hideous devils of 
selfishness, and lust, cruelty, and falsehood appear. We see them 
at home, we see them abroad. And our motive breaks down. 
Human nature does not look admirable in itself, but only admir- 
able in Christ. The millions are not in him. They will be 
admirable when they are like him, but men are not very Christlike 
to-day. The motive is good, but not large enough. We get on 
the rocks too soon. It takes an ocean for an Oregon. 

So with every form of the religion of humanity and ethical 
salvation, or philanthropy as a worship. Admiration for the race, 
pity for the race, belief in the race — they all break down at last. 
They are not large enough. James Hannington could not live in 
any one of them. Isabella Thoburn would strand and lash herself 



"beloved, if god so loved us" 285 

to pieces in this shallow sea. The commercial appeal is good 
but not masterful ; the desire to plant the flag is fascinating but 
not final; the wish to civilize is noble but not noblest. Some- 
where all these are exhausted. But the love of God fails not and 
is not exhausted. Love for men because of God's love for us 
all gives us an ocean to float in. And there are no hidden rocks 
to wreck us here. "Love of God, so pure and boundless !" It is 
pure enough to see through and large enough to live and move 
in. For the missionary movement began by being a movement 
of love. God was its source and spring, Christ its full and 
glorious expression. It ends by being still a movement of love, 
God still being its source and spring, the living Christ still its 
full and glorious expression, and redeemed men like ourselves its 
faithful messengers and witnesses in all the earth. We will not 
measure our love nor govern our energies now by our success, 
but by his love ; nor by our means, but by his love ; nor by our 
difficulties, but by his love ; nor by distance nor hardship, but by 
his love. The heathen are not lovely, nor are we, but his love 
draws us from without, and drives us from within; and across 
all seas, up all rivers, over all mountains, beneath all suns, beside 
all waters, we children of his love to other children of his love, 
will go and send until "one family we dwell in him." 

The motive must be pure enough to live in, large enough to The Point of 
move in, and high enough to rise in. This is really the parting De P arture 
of the ways. We must have one point of contact, but we must 
also have our point of departure. Christianity must be like other 
religions, the Bible like other books, the Christian missionary 
like other men. That gives us relations and contact. We must 
touch men as their own religions, their own sacred books, their 
own teachers touch them. But we must touch them as all these 
do not. There must be one element in this movement and its 
motive which makes Christianity not one of a kind, but one alone. 
This is the crucial test, and it meets its crucial test with its cross 
and its crucified Christ. It is not many words backward from 
"if God so loved us" to those other words, "propitiation for our 
sins." And the holy old mystic tied them together by calling us 
"beloved." In the sacrament we say, "Not for ours only, but 
also for the sins of the whole world." The motive for our going 
has become sacramental. We spell it out at last in the light and 
terms of the Redeemer's cross and his wonderful redemption. 



286 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Only One 

Motive 

Redemptive 



This is how God loved us. This is what drives us across seas 
and lands. 

Other motives are pure and large, but only one is redemptive. 
Other religions contain beautiful precepts, superb literature, and 
lofty doctrines, but only one contains the power of God unto sal- 
vation. Like other books, our Bible has its heroes; unlike all 
others, ours has its Christ. Others have great names, only one 
is called Jesus. Other religions have songs, but only one sings: 



" There is a fountain filled with blood 
Drawn from Immanuel's veins ; 

And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, 
Lose all their guilty stains." 



God's 

Unfailing 

Pledge 



A New 

Creation 



Here we are on the heights, my brethren. I would not go across 
the street to give India a new theology or China a new code ; the 
one has more theology than it can understand, the other a better 
code than it can live up to. But I would go around the world to 
tell India and China of Him who is able to save to the uttermost. 
It comes to this, finally, that the great motive is not the command, 
but the Christ; not the record, but the Redeemer living in its 
pages; not the fair story, but the sufficient Saviour. Herein is 
love, that God sent his Son. Through him God speaks to us, 
through him we speak to God. The incarnation, the cross, and the 
open grave are God's unfailing pledge to his children that he 
loves them and seeks them; that the door into the old home 
stands open; that stained and beaten men may be clean and 
victorious men. They are God's declaration that sin is not su- 
preme, that sorrow is not overwhelming, and that death has no 
more dominion. Christ came because this once was true. He 
lives and it is forever true. Christ came not simply for man's 
improvement, but for man's redemption. "We owe him more 
than our thanks, we owe him our lives." We were bad, he died 
to make us good. We were wrecked, he comes to restore us. 
Another has said in substance : "He was not a contributor to 
human progress, but the Saviour of human ruin. It was not a 
new impulse or stimulus, but a new life and power. Pentecost 
was not a new sensation, but a new experience. It was not a 
tonic to the old exhaustion, it was a resurrection from the dead ; 
not a revival, but a new creation ;" not the throwing of a few 
stones out of the path, but the opening wide of a new and living 



THE NEED OF MISSIONARY INFORMATION 287 

way. This is how God loved us and loves us. Love so pure that 
the cross is its only fit expression ; love so large that the light of 
the cross fills the earth; love so high that the cross stands alone 
as its symbol! This is how God loved us and loves us. O, rare 
old mystic, truly you knew ! You heard his words, you saw his 
eyes, you touched his hands, you leaned on his breast, you saw 
him on the cross and after. And you said, "if God so loved us." 
You are right, you are right, "We ought also to love, we ought 
also to love, we ought also to love one another/' God helping 
us, so we will. 



THE NEED OF MISSIONARY INFORMATION 
IN THE HOME CHURCH 

The Rev. George B. Smyth, D.D. 

When in July last I received word that I was to read a paper 
at this great Convention I was troubled. I was just beginning 
slowly to recover from a long and serious illness. I was still 
lying close beside the dark river, and could almost hear its waters 
flowing ominously by. It seemed hardly possible then that I 
would ever be able to do anything again. But the Master of life 
touched the feeble body and brought it back to health and vigor, 
and I am here to-day enjoying the high privilege of speaking on 
a subject of vast interest to myself, and of vast importance to the 
great enterprise to which, twenty years ago, I gave my life. 

Again I was troubled because I soon saw that it would be im- A Frank 
possible to write frankly on the subject assigned me without Presentatlon 
giving some admirable people serious offense. But my anxiety 
on that score has since been relieved. In the official notice of the 
purpose and character of this Convention which reached me later 
I found these words: "The Convention to be held in Cleveland 
October 21-24, 1902, is not to be regarded as one of the altogether 
too numerous conventions now being held in the Christian world. 
Its purpose is not primarily to arouse enthusiasm. It is rather 
a council of war." That is the true ideal for such a gathering as 
this. We are not here to flatter one another, to tell one another 
about the great successes of our Church, omitting entirely all 
mention of her failures, to indulge in a pitiable debauch of de- 
nominational or other boasting. We are here to consult, to 



288 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Present 
Lack of 
Information 



Poorly 
Attended 
Missionary 
Meetings 



deliberate, to learn, if we may, how the missionary work which 
God has committed to our care may best be done. We are here, 
as the announcement says, to hold a "council of war." Now, if 
there is one thing more than another demanded of those who 
take part in such a council it is that each shall speak the truth 
as he knows it, in no sense intending to offend, but rather that, 
by so doing, he may the more effectively serve the great cause 
whose interests we are here to consider. I feel therefore at 
liberty to speak freely; the very charter of the Convention not 
only permits, it demands it. 

With this much of brief but necessary introduction, let us 
proceed to the subject before us — the need of missionary infor- 
mation in the home Church. I shall begin by defining. What 
does the title of this paper permit or demand ? Strictly speaking, 
I suppose it might be expressed in this fashion : the lack of infor- 
mation in the home Church. But this is also included: the 
pressing demand for information; and this opens before us a 
large way, and permits and necessitates the consideration of the 
question, how may this information be supplied? Without dis- 
cussing this phase of the subject we should have to confine 
ourselves to the negative and discouraging task of showing that 
missionary information is generally lacking among us. To do 
that, and nothing more, would be an inadequate work indeed. 
We must do that, but we cannot stop there. 

I would invite your attention, therefore, in the first place, to 
some of the evidences of the fact that we do not know as much 
about missions as we ought to. Beginning at home and with 
the simplest things, that there is a great lack of knowledge as to 
what missions are, and what they are doing, is evident from the 
very great difficulty often experienced in inducing people to attend 
meetings held for the consideration of missions and missionary 
work. I do not, of course, refer to missionary conventions like 
this, great conventions are always well attended. I refer to the 
regular— or, alas ! as it must too often be called, the irregular — 
missionary meeting of the local church. By many among us the 
missionary enterprise is not regarded as an essential function of 
the church's life under present conditions, and interest in it is 
not thought of as an integral part of the Christian character. It 
is looked upon by many as a generous fad, the working of which 
is not a matter of concern, and the effects of which, even at the 



THE NEED OF MISSIONARY INFORMATION 289 

best, are without importance in the present and without promise 
for the future. In a word, too many of our people look upon the 
whole subject as remote and unreal, good enough for children 
and elect ladies, but not big enough, not fraught with issues 
weighty enough, to demand the attention of intelligent men. The 
great enterprise is regarded as a kind of side issue, scarcely 
worthy of attention amid the pressing, and supposedly practical, 
claims of our strenuous modern life. 

To show the general truth of these statements nothing a Subject 
more is needed than to call attention to the infrequency with S 00 , ^ 
which missions are included in the programs of Epworth 
League and Sunday school conventions, camp meetings, min- 
isterial and lay associations, and other general Church as- 
semblies. At the League annual meetings the subject is 
mentioned and twenty minutes may be given to its con- 
sideration. I have attended Epworth League general meet- 
ings where the evangelization of the world, the proclamation of 
the message of Christ to men, received far less attention than 
was given to the most trifling incident of a merely local character 
that came before those in attendance. At Sunday school conven- 
tions the subject is hardly ever mentioned at all. The organizers 
and leaders of such meetings do not appear to deem it necessary 
to train the children of the Church to a generous interest in the 
redemption of the world. They discuss methods of teaching, the 
organization of schools, the qualifications of teachers, and num- 
berless other matters chiefly subjective or mechanical, but they 
neglect this magnificent missionary enterprise, this glorious 
altruism of the Christian spirit, this desire to make the privileges 
and the blessings of the Gospel the common possessions of the 
world. Yet here, if made aright, is the basis of the noblest The Basis of 
appeal to everything that is best in children and youth. It would Al ^ ea i est 
do them more good, give them a finer moral uplift, expand more 
widely their intellectual horizon, and enrich more grandly all of 
life than most of the themes to which Sunday school organizers 
and teachers devote themselves so zealously. No nobler thought 
ever enters the mind of child or man than this, that he may be 
an active cooperating partner with God in the redemption of the 
world. The Sunday school leaders do not always think thus of 
missions, they do not know what missions are, they need infor- 
mation. 
19 



Appeal 



290 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Meetings of 

Ministerial 

Associations 



A Narrow 
View 



But stranger still is the neglect of missions at the meetings of 
ministerial associations, those gatherings of the very teachers 
and leaders of the Church. There, if anywhere, all the great 
interests of the Church of Christ, all that concerns the establish- 
ment and growth of the kingdom, should receive earnest and 
properly , proportioned attention. The world-wide enterprises of 
missions do not receive it. This is not due to constitutional 
narrowness on the part of those who attend those meetings and 
take part in them. They are not narrow men in their intellectual 
interests. They pay too much attention, perhaps, at such meet- 
ings, to the mechanics of the profession, but they do look beyond 
themselves, beyond their merely personal and parochial concerns. 
The trouble is that when they do so they too often turn both eyes 
and ears backward, and listen to learned essays on the Egyptians, 
or the Assyrians, or the Babylonians, or some other ancient race 
which, however interesting, is dead, and has no sort of connection 
with the living world of to-day. Indeed, one occasionally meets 
with a learned brother who tells you with considerable pride that 
he has made a specialty of Egypt or Assyria, but who looks at 
you with polite amazement if you ask him how much time he has 
given to China or Japan. Remember that China and India and 
Japan are alive, and with the voice of life demand your attention. 
To the minister of to-day the living Chinaman is of infinitely 
more importance than the dead Assyrian, and the policy of the 
empress dowager of far greater moment than the decrees of 
Nebuchadnezzar. 

The programs thus referred to, and the little space assigned 
in them to missions, are due to want of knowledge, to lack of 
information. The missionary propaganda is igriorantly looked 
upon as a small thing. It is, on the contrary, one of the mightiest 
forces of the day. There are many Western agencies at work in 
non-Christian lands, and among the greatest, if not itself the 
greatest, for individual, social, and national regeneration, is the 
Christian mission with its churches, its hospitals, its schools, the 
new literature it is creating, the new thought it is diffusing, the 
new life it is making. In the old half-dead world of the East it 
is the mightiest dynamic from the West breaking down the 
worthless of the old, and bringing in the best of the new. If 
this place of missions abroad were known would they be treated 
as they are by the. makers of convention programs? If the 



THE NEED OF MISSIONARY INFORMATION 2gi 

missionary movement were looked upon, as it ought to be, as the Dignity 
renewer, the remaker, the regenerator of nations, would any man ^'^l 
consent to be ignorant of it while he prided himself on his Movement 
acquaintance with Pharaoh's uncles, the aunts of Assurbanipal, 
and all the rest of the dead world about the Euphrates and the 
Nile? The Yang-tse, the Ganges, the Congo, and the Amazon 
are the rivers of to-day, and the millions who are by them are the 
people who crowd and press us for to-day's attention. 

In all this do not think that I am asking too much. I do not 
ask that missions shall always be given right of way, that every 
other subject shall be pushed aside. I ask only that they be given 
the place to which their importance entitles them, that the makers 
of programs cultivate what they have not cultivated in the past, 
a due sense of programmic proportion. 

Another evidence of the lack of information is the lamentable Views of the 
effect on the Christian people of the slanderous misrepresentations ° e " ro er 
which are periodically sent home by wandering special corre- 
spondents, or brought home by the pestilent tribe of Western 
globe-trotters. This was painfully shown at the time of the 
Boxer outbreak in China. Through the press the whole Western 
world was deluged with misrepresentations and falsehoods about 
the conduct of the missionaries. Some of the statements were 
absolutely preposterous, but nothing was too wicked or too foolish 
to be published, nothing was so malicious that it did not find 
believers even among Christians. 

It is not necessary now to repeat the charges then made. Those Misrepresen- 
of you who read the papers will easily recall them. You will re- tatl0ns 
member how the missionaries were accused as the authors of 
that terrible outbreak. They were charged with establishing in 
China a solidarity of thieves, beggars, and assassins, and then, 
in the name of Christianity, protecting them from the vengeance 
of their outraged countrymen by throwing over them the shelter 
of a foreign flag. One wretch went so far as to say that the 
missionaries received special rewards for conversions which ex- 
ceeded a certain number, and that therefore they increased their 
numbers by the aid of all the scoundrels whom they could make 
sensible to their financial advances. 

Every one of these charges, so far as the Protestant mission- charges 
aries are concerned, was absolutely false, yet they were believed J a J. se ' y ?\ 
by multitudes of people ; some, if not all of them, were believed Many 



292 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Missionaries 
the Best 
Authorities 



Wrong 
Methods of 
Promotion 



by many Christians. It is not necessary to say that no one be- 
lieved them who knew how our missionaries were chosen, how 
their work was supervised, what they were doing, and what the 
results of their work were. The men who were acquainted with 
the recent history of the Orient, who knew on the one hand of 
the unscrupulous aggressions of some European Powers, and on 
the other of the immense apparatus of benevolent and ennobling 
agencies which the missionaries had brought into existence, the 
character of the Christians, the whole influence of the native 
Church, knew that all those charges were but the wretched mis- 
representations of ignorant or prejudiced men. It looked for a 
time as if there would be a panic in the Church, as if many of the 
friends of missions would refuse further help. It was all due to 
lack of information. An informed Church, a Church whose 
people knew what missions were, and what they had done, and 
who were familiar with the great story of the growth and prog- 
ress of the kingdom through the ages, would have seen nothing 
in the whole terrible outbreak to shake her faith for a moment. 
Ignorance is fear ; knowledge, in this case as in others, is courage, 
confidence, steadiness, the assurance of victory in spite of appar- 
ent defeat. 

On this whole subject remember that your own agents, the 
missionaries, are the best authorities, and that when any man 
contradicts them the burden of proof is on him and never on 
them. Remember this and you will be saved from much anxiety ; 
it will enable you to read the antimissionary dispatches in the 
morning papers with the quiet assurance that nine tenths of them 
are false and the other tenth grossly exaggerated. I have lived in 
China for seventeen years and I have rarely seen a special corre- 
spondent or a globe-trotter who was competent to criticise mis- 
sionary work in any real and vital way, for the simple reason that 
these gentlemen are not acquainted with the methods or the 
results of that work, they do not know the Christians, they rarely 
go where most of them are, the interior, and when they do they 
learn nothing at first hand because of their ignorance of the 
language. Do not be troubled by these reports. If you want 
to hear missions criticised ask a missionary to do it. 

A third evidence of widespread lack of information is seen in 
the hysterical methods sometimes adopted to promote them. The 
exploitation of the crisal theory of missions with which the 



THE NEED OF MISSIONARY INFORMATION 293 

Church is periodically afflicted is striking evidence of the fact that 
the Christian people do not know as much as they ought to of 
this work to which they give so much. What is the crisal theory ? 
It is that view of missions which finds in every turn of the 
calendar momentous missionary issues, which sees in every war 
waged by one's country a new, though a bloody, highway for the 
Gospel, which threatens missionary ruin every time a decrease is 
found necessary in the appropriations, and which launches out 
into a veritable debauch of missionary prediction if you will only 
give a certain specified sum per annum to missions. I say that 
no men would indulge in statements and appeals of that kind if 
they felt they were addressing an informed people. Here is a 
fruitful theme for discussion, but I cannot discuss it. I will 
simply say, an informed Church would devote itself to missionary 
work as an essential part of its life. It would need no hysterical 
urging to induce it to contribute of its substance to the preaching 
of Christ to the world. It would enter upon that sublime enter- 
prise with joy because of its love of God, its compassion for de- 
prived humanity, its own profound and glad consciousness of the 
worth of the Gospel to itself. It would accept the undertaking as 
a high trust from its Master, and would resolve to keep at it till 
the work was done, no matter how long the time required. And 
it would know that it was not to be done in a day or a year or a 
decade. No temporary defeats would discourage it, no predic- 
tions of impossible or improbable successes would be used to 
arouse it. It would look upon the missionary not as the builder 
of a wall, the removal of a few stones from which would cause 
the whole to crumble, but as the liberator of a great spiritual force 
which would work against all opposition and which, while it 
might be checked for a time, could never be destroyed. Before 
an instructed Church we should never hear missionary speakers Nobler 
say that a small cut in the appropriation threatened the life of Conceptions 
our missions, reached to the vitals, and all the rest of the well- Instructed 
known calamity declamation. Such a state is fatal to our whole urc 
missionary work. It is utterly discouraging. If it is true it shows 
that the work has not been properly done, that our missionaries 
have not understood the nature of the force with which they have 
been dealing. But it not true. I have been on the mission 
field for nearly twenty years, and have visited many of our 
churches in the Far East, and I do not hesitate to say that there 



294 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

are no Methodist missions of that kind, none so poorly founded 
and so poorly conducted that a temporary reduction vitally affects 
them. If there are, the thing to do is not to send them more 
money, but to recall the missionaries, and send men in their places 
who know what missionary work is. The work of past years is 
not imperiled. A failure in appropriations hinders, it limits the 
possibilities of expansion, but, where the truth and power of the 
Gospel have been set free, it can never utterly destroy. Here, too, 
ignorance is excitement and fear; here knowledge means steadi- 
ness, confidence, strength. 

Having now in this summary fashion considered some of the 
evidences of a lack of missionary information among us, let us 
take up the question how such information may be given. The 
effort to answer it by the society costs thousands of dollars a 
year. That cannot be helped ; the money is well spent when in- 
formation is really disseminated. Let us consider briefly some of 
the various agencies at our command, and appraise, if possible, 
the value of each. 
The ^ First in order I place the missionary secretaries. One of the 

BeJaSSufK chief duties of these officials has hitherto been the spreading of 
missionary information. The ever-increasing responsibilities of 
administration are gradually withdrawing them from that work 
now, but they still bear to it a commanding relation. They have 
unusual opportunities for knowing what the missionaries are 
doing and how the great enterprise fares. They are in constant 
correspondence with the missions, and the whole field is ever 
before them. They have peculiar opportunities, therefore, for 
observing the movements all along our far-extended mission line, 
and should be able to tell us the place and the meaning with 
reference to the whole of the somewhat bewildering details of 
which we learn elsewhere. This, I think, is the chief function of 
the secretarial office in the dissemination of missionary informa- 
tion, and I should like to see the corresponding secretaries issue, 
every year, a carefully written report giving a survey of the whole 
field, showing us in outline what has happened, properly corre- 
lating the scattered details, and showing us the bearing on the 
great enterprise of all the leading movements, political and com- 
mercial, of the time. Such a report, if thoroughly prepared, 
couched in temperate language, carefully guarded against over- 
statement, hyperoptimism, and all claims to omniscience, would 



THE NEED OF MISSIONARY INFORMATION 295 

be widely read by the people, and would, I am confident, exercise 
an immense and favorable influence for the missionary propa- 
ganda throughout the whole Church. 

The Bishops. These great leaders of the Church might take a The 
great part, very much greater than they do, in this work of dis- E P 18C °P ate 
seminating missionary information. Most of them have visited 
our mission fields, they have seen things for themselves, the people 
crowd to hear them, their words are listened to. At the Con- 
ferences they speak to immense audiences in which are gathered 
the leaders of the Church, both clerical and lay. I should like to 
see a bishop give up a Sunday morning service to a survey of the 
missions which he has seen on an episcopal visit abroad. What 
an inspiration it would be, and with what authority it would come 
from a man in his position ! He could point out the progress of 
the kingdom, the obstacles that oppose it, the significance in rela- 
tion to missionary work of some of the great political movements 
of the time. I am sure that sometimes an address of that kind 
would be more profitable than some of the sermons we hear at 
Conference, which, however eloquent, are too often speculative 
and needless defenses of Christianity, the magnificent spectacular 
knocking down of straw men with all the pomp and circumstance 
of glorious war. Venerable fathers of the Church, tell us from 
your high places, from your Sunday morning pulpits, how fares 
the great enterprise abroad, how the glorious fabric rises. Show 
us the builders on the walls, the enemy around, the suspense, the 
struggle, the occasional defeat, the frequent victory. Give us big 
things to think of, great things to do, grand results to hope for. 

The Official Press. It is dangerous to complain of an editor, The 
for he always has it in his power to strike back terribly. Yet I J^JjJJ, * 
am running no risk in this case, for the editors of our Advocates 
are reasonable men, and will bear with me while I tell them of 
the faults of some of their number. They are not all equally at 
fault ; indeed, a few of them are unimpeachable. Some of them, 
however, have not always treated the missionary enterprises of 
our Church fairly, they have not always given them their propor- 
tionate share of editorial attention. They have printed missionary 
news, but it has too often been disjointed and scrappy, or been 
pushed off into some out-of-the-way corner where one looked for 
nothing but advertisements. Serious editorial discussion of mis- 
sions they seldom have. They have mission paragraphs, but 



296 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A Subject of 
the Greatest 
Importance 



Sympathy 
and Breadth 
of Vision 



they give us no such thoroughgoing interest-compelling editorials 
as are given to the constitution, to some detail of ecclesiastical 
procedure, to an unfortunate heretic, to some religious, theolog- 
ical, or ecclesiastical extravagance. And yet missions are among 
the greatest subjects of the time. Beyond the seas a Methodism 
is growing which will one day surprise us, but it will come upon 
us unawares, for the watchers on the walls, the editors of our 
official papers, have not always kept us informed. 

And yet no subject can be of greater importance in the long 
run. The cause of missions is the cause of civilization abroad. 
The only hope for the permanent moral regeneration of the non- 
Christian peoples of the world is in their acceptance of Christ as 
Master, and the teaching of Christ as the rule of life. "What 
think ye of Christ?" is the most momentous of all questions, and 
by the answer to it, whatever else a people have or lack, shall 
their destiny be ordered. The work whose only object is the 
training of the nations to answer it aright is a subject of infinite 
importance. Every interest of the non-Christian world, educa- 
tion, philanthropy, commerce, in a word, civilization itself, is 
bound up with it. The man who utters a careless criticism of 
missions is a traitor to the best interests of mankind. The 
Church editor who neglects it, who is so lacking in knowledge 
that he does not see its place in the present, or who is so wanting 
in perspective that he does not see its place in the future, is not 
equal to the demands of the great position which he holds. 

While saying this, however, it is a pleasure to admit the very 
great improvement in the treatment of missions noticeable in the 
last few years in most of our official papers. The great subject 
is treated with a sympathy and breadth of vision which until 
recently have been conspicuously absent. More space and more 
prominence are given to missionary news and to discussions of 
missionary subjects. The very full interviews with bishops re- 
turning from their fields which have recently appeared are 
the promise and the pledge of much better things still to come. 
The men who guide the policies of our official press wield an 
immense influence. It is in their power to lift the whole subject 
of missions to a higher plane of thought and effort than it has 
ever yet occupied. By the place which they give it in their papers, 
by the fullness and seriousness with which they treat it editorially, 
they can redeem it from what, in too many places it is now, a 



THE NEED OF MISSIONARY INFORMATION 297 

mere generous outlet for the kindly energies of some gentle souls, 
and press it home upon the Church for what it really is — the very 
object and reason of her own existence. 

Missionary Literature. Time forbids more than a brief refer- A strong 
ence to this large subject. We need a first-class missionary xIJ&q™* 
periodical, one which shall do for us what that greatest of Prot- 
estant missionary periodicals, The Church Missionary Intelli- 
gencer, does for the Church Missionary Society of England. The 
Methodist Episcopal Church has never had a missionary maga- 
zine really worthy of its work. The object of such a periodical 
should be to keep us informed, to show us what is being done, to 
keep us in touch with those who are doing it, to interest us not 
merely in the victory, but in the fight, to make us spectators of 
the whole grand struggle. There should be a full and intelligent 
treatment of every influence which affects in any way the great 
enterprise. Political movements, commercial expansion, every- 
thing that tends, in any large way, to affect the future prospects 
of the people among whom missionaries are working, should be 
noted and carefully watched. The reader should be helped to 
see things aright, and in all their bearings. Such a periodical 
would be read, for its news would be vital, of profound interest, 
of vast importance. 

Of course, other kinds of literature are needed. The effort of other 
the Epworth League to introduce the best missionary literature Li t erature 
to its members is to be commended and should everywhere be 
seconded. We are not doing what we ought and what we might 
toward providing interesting missionary reading for the young. 
What we do issue is not of a kind suited to appeal to the vigorous 
and full-lived youth of to-day. It is too pale, too characterless, 
too remote in its interest, too much like a message from fairy- 
land to be listened to by this practical, strenuous world. In thus 
failing to interest the young we are making a serious mistake. 
We are living as if there were no to-morrow, as if all missionary 
effort would end with the adults of to-day. 

In all this we of the "parent board" have much to learn, but it 
is not necessary to travel far to find a teacher. We have one 
near us, we have one with us ; she is our own sister, the Woman's 
Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
with whose missionary periodical, the Woman's Missionary 
Friend, we have nothing that can be compared for a moment. 



298 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Real 

Source 

of Our 

Knowledge 

about 

Missions 



How to Use 

the 

Missionary 



A Great 
English 
Society 



The Missionaries. But little is needed to show how peculiarly 
fitted for supplying the Church's need of information is the 
missionary. In him we have the real source of all our knowledge 
about missions, and an agency for its diffusion which our Mis- 
sionary Society has never even measurably used. All sorts of 
strange things, some of which are true, are said about mission- 
aries as speakers. The chief charge is that they are not interesting 
and cannot address great audiences. That is indeed true of most 
of us, but we have one thing which no others have, we have 
direct, personal, intimate knowledge of missionary work, the field, 
the methods, the results. Few of us can address great assemblies, 
few of any class can, but the big things of the world are not done 
in great assemblies. Most such gatherings amount to nothing, 
and are nothing but an opportunity for display, and for relieving 
the fussiness with which the Protestant Churches of America 
seem more and more, as times goes on, to be afflicted. 

Use the missionary aright and he will be found the freshest, 
the best disseminator of missionary intelligence that you have. 
Don't keep him on the field till he is nearly dead and then expect 
him to do anything at home. Bring him home while still in 
health to meet his supporters, to tell the freshest news with the 
living voice of the man who does the work for which all this 
missionary money is given. The man from the front, unless an 
incorrigible dunce, or addressing an audience which cares more 
for fine words than for fine deeds, will be more interesting to the 
people than any man who looks at the fray through the blinding 
distance of ten thousand miles. 

Use the missionaries systematically. Let itineraries be ar- 
ranged for them by the proper authorities after correspondence 
with the churches. Let there be an organized system of deputa- 
tion work, and the results, I believe, will be immeasurable. They 
will not stir up excitement, but they will diffuse intelligence, they 
will in themselves be a bond that will unite the missions abroad 
and their friends at home as nothing else can. 

All this is not mere theorizing about a hitherto somewhat de- 
spised agency. The greatest Protestant missionary society in the 
world, the Church Missionary Society of England, makes its 
appeals to the churches almost entirely through its missionaries, 
and no other society has so much money, no other has so many 
missionaries who support themselves, no other receives so many 



THE NEED OF MISSIONARY INFORMATION 299 

offers of service when an emergency arises. I remember well the 
awful massacre at Hua Shan, China, in the fall of 1895. Nine 
missionaries were killed, a whole mission was wiped out. The 
great society to which they belonged made no demands for re- 
dress, but appealed for volunteers to enter the field, and in a few 
weeks, from every part of the British empire, came offers of men 
and women for the dangerous service. The once afflicted mission 
is now larger and more prosperous than it ever was. It is 
strangely cosmopolitan in its make-up. The head of it is the son 
of a Canadian judge, and his coworkers are men and women 
from many of the far-spreading colonies of England. Such is 
the reward that comes to a society which makes it part of its 
business to keep the missions abroad and their supporters at 
home in the closest possible connection. 

In the missionaries of our Church, if brought home before they A Force 
are broken in health, we have as efficient a force for the diffusion ^fffusfon of 
of intelligence as is possessed by any other body in the world. Intelligence 
Let us use it. Let us use it wisely. Don't always take a collection 
when you have a missionary speak. Bring him to your church to 
impart knowledge, to show your people what is being done with 
their money. Don't turn him into a scarecrow by taking a mis- 
sionary collection every time he opens his lips in your pulpit. 
Treat the missionary as you would treat any other minister. Let 
him speak in your church without making the people feel that 
they must pay to hear him. Use the missionary, but don't abuse 
him. Don't insult the sublime cause which he represents by 
treating him as a cheap sort of ecclesiastical showman. Some 
years ago, in going to a church at which the late beloved and 
lamented Dr. S. L. Baldwin and myself were to speak, I saw in 
the shop windows great posters announcing the meeting as fol- 
lows: "Great missionary meeting at such and such a church 
to-night. Two distinguished missionaries. Hairbreadth escapes, 
thrilling adventures, bloodthirsty scenes. Everybody come." I 
did not wonder on reaching the church to find it crowded to the 
doors, and neither did I wonder when the good brother who at 
the pastor's request made the opening prayer closed it with these 
words: "And now, O Lord, when all our work is done take us 
to heaven, where there are no missionaries, nothing to mar our 
peace." 

I have kept to the last the most important agent of all, the 



300 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Most 

Important 

Agent 



More 
Profound 
Conviction 
Needed 



greatest man in Methodism, the pastor. Bishops may deliver 
magnificent addresses, editors may write, and missionaries and 
missionary secretaries may do what they please, but unless the 
pastor is interested they will accomplish nothing. The diffusion 
of intelligence, by whatever method, cannot be effected without 
his cooperation. He is the chief factor in the problem, the great 
diffuser of knowledge and inspiration, the man on whose fidelity 
success abroad as well as at home depends. If he is opposed to 
missions, or if he is not interested, missionaries will not be in- 
vited, missionary meetings will not be attended, missionary 
periodicals will not be read. Any program, therefore, which does 
not give him the chief place is certain to fail. 

In view of this it is surely not too much to expect that every 
pastor in Methodism will know what his own Church is doing on 
the mission field. This is no less his privilege than his duty. 
And, knowing, he ought to have his people know; he should 
keep steadily before them the redemption of the whole world as 
the great object of Christian endeavor; he should help every 
member of his church to feel the inspiration that comes from 
the consciousness of sharing in this splendid work. Many 
a little church would be made big if it had big things to 
think about; many a small task would be ennobled if seen 
to be related to the sublime purpose of the redemption of the 
world. 

I do not think that I am slandering my brethren of the ministry 
when I say that many of them do not seem to be profoundly 
impressed with this responsibility of theirs for missionary suc- 
cesses. They preach on missions once a year and then drop them 
for a year. Many never refer to them at any other time; they 
devote no prayer meetings to their consideration, and do not see 
that in the Epworth League and in the Sunday school they receive 
proper and proportionate attention. One would think from the 
paucity of their references to missions that the subject was one 
of minor importance; no one would dream from their attitude 
that it was one of the great subjects of the day, a cause of 
anxiety to statesmen, the chief object of attack for unscrupulous 
globe-trotters, a subject of contempt to the ignorant and the 
philosophers, a subject of immense moment to many great and 
populous nations, matter of infinite concern to devout Christians 
everywhere, matter of such importance to Jesus, the Master and 



YOUNG PEOPLE AND SCRIPTURAL GIVING 301 

Lord, that he died to make them successful. Let our pastors then 
observe in their preaching a better rule of proportion, distribute A Better 
their missionary sermons throughout the year; let them show Jjjjj^rtion 
that the redemption of the majority of the race deserves more 
than one fifty-second of our Sundays for its consideration. They 
need not always connect it with money, but they should preach 
on it, spread knowledge, increase interest, and fill every soul in 
their congregation with the grandeur of the glorious enterprise. 
Then there will be no need of conventions, no need of wandering 
secretaries, no need of hysterical appeals, no overstatement, no 
ephemeral excitement; for the whole Church, in sympathy with 
the motive, will accept the evangelization of the world as one of 
its chief duties, will accept gladly all that that duty implies, will 
be prepared for defeats, will not be surprised at victories, and 
will be resolved to go on, whether the time be long or short, 
whether the work be difficult or easy, till the end. 



THE EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF 

YOUNG PEOPLE IN SCRIPTURAL 

HABITS OF GIVING 

The Rev. Charles Edward Locke, D.D. 

Giving is living : it is a law of growth and order. It prevails a Law of 
in the physical universe, and in the social world is the "Open Life 
Sesame" which is establishing universal reciprocity and brother- 
hood. In morals and religion it is the shibboleth which admits 
us to the fairest privileges of an ever-widening existence. "There 
is that scattereth yet increaseth." 

In giving man's capacity for receiving and being enlarges. If 
we would get we must give. Whittier sings : 

" Hands that ope but to receive 
Empty close ; they only live 
Richly who can richly give." 

The miser's greatest sin is against himself. Avarice atrophies, Generosity 
but generosity is twice blessed: "It blesses him that gives and J^ 1C g d 
him that takes ;" but the larger joy is to him that gives. Happi- 
ness, activity, selfhood, and purpose are bound up in giving — 
giving freely. The Nazarene Carpenter stated a deep principle 



302 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

of true character and happy living when he said, "It is more 
blessed to give than to receive." 

" The secret of life — it is giving, 

To minister and to serve ; 
Love's law binds man to the angel, 

And ruin befalls if we swerve. 

" To illumine the scroll of creation, 
One swift, sudden vision sufficed ; 

Every riddle of life worth the reading 
Has found its interpreter — Christ." 

The In the education and training of young people in scriptural 

Acceptance of habits f giving it should first of all be emphasized that, as the 
Gifts whole Christian system rests upon God incarnate in Christ, so 

is all personal Christian character based upon Christ. Our young 
people must be led to accept all heavenly gifts; such as "faith, 
the gift of God," "the gift of the Holy Ghost;" "the gift of 
God, which is eternal life;" and "the gift of Jesus Christ," for 
"God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son." 
"Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift!" We should 
follow the example of our imperial apostle who exhorts the young 
man Timothy, "Neglect not the gift that is in thee." With in- 
finite tenderness and justice, in writing to his son in the Gospel, 
Paul says, "I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in 
thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother 
Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also." The youth of 
this twentieth century's dawning are the sons and daughters and 
the grandsons and granddaughters of the most majestic ancestry 
the world has seen — a heroism that could found a republic and 
free the slave, and make the nineteenth century the greatest period 
of missionary achievement since the resurrection of Christ. To 
our youth have been bequeathed colossal tasks, but they have 
also inherited extraordinary gifts ; and they must be persistently 
"put in remembrance that they stir up the gift of God which is 
in them." 
Clear Hence, if we would instruct the youth in giving they must be 

onsecra ion p ersuac [ e d to accept the Giver. In clear, definite consecration 
they must offer themselves to his service, and receive in their 
own hearts the personal assurance that "the Spirit of God wit- 
nesseth with their spirits that they are the children of God," so 



YOUNG PEOPLE AND SCRIPTURAL GIVING 3O3 

that with tearful joy they will go singing amid their labors dear 
Doctor Hunter's immortal song: 

" There is a spot to me more dear 

Than native vale or mountain ; 
A spot for which affection's tear 

Springs grateful from its fountain. 
O hallowed spot ! O sacred hour ! 

Where love divine first found me. 
Wherever falls my distant lot 

My heart shall linger round thee. 
And when from earth I rise to soar 

Up to my home in heaven, 
Down will I cast mine eyes once more, 

Where I was first forgiven." 

With hearts illuminated by the Holy Spirit, they will be prepared 
to study God's word in order to find direction concerning "scrip- 
tural habits of giving." 

In their education on the subject of giving, the young people Definite 
should receive definite instruction. They are accustomed to Ins truction 
definite instruction in the public school and college ; mathematics, 
chemistry, and history state propositions and problems and de- 
mand demonstrations and exact results. The youthful mind is 
trained in the habit of striving to pursue a positive path, however 
tortuous or difficult. So, in the Sunday school the youth are 
taught definite knowledge concerning Bible history, the doctrines 
of sin and salvation, and the divine person of Jesus Christ. But 
our disastrous blunder in the past has been that when we reach 
the momentous question of giving to the Lord we have blunted 
the edge of expectation of the youth who has just come from an 
enchanting reading of the Old Testament, by saying, "O, give 
according to your ability." Suppose he was turned away by his 
teacher in algebra, or geometry, when he inquired concerning a 
difficult equation, or a perplexing theorem, with the words, "O, 
solve it to the best of your ability," how many mathematicians 
would come out of our schools, think you? 

Is there definite direction in the Scriptures concerning giving? old 
Unquestionably there is, and "he who runs may read." Shall we JjJ^JSf 
confine ourselves only to the New Testament in pursuing this 
investigation? Why should we? We go back to the Old Testa- 
ment for the Decalogue, for instruction concerning the atonement, 
for the radiant eloquence of Isaiah, for the fervent songs of 



304 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Two Great 
Principles 



Robbing God 



David, and for incontrovertible arguments for a personal God; 
and, moreover, it was to the Old Testament that Paul referred 
when he urged Timothy to continue in the study of the Holy 
Scriptures, which are "given by the inspiration of God and are 
profitable for instruction in righteousness." 

There are two great principles for supporting the cause of God 
enunciated in the Bible. The first of these is in the Old Testa- 
ment, and it is, "The tithe is the Lord's." Five hundred years 
after Abraham had presented tithes to Melchizedek, the mys- 
terious king of Salem, Moses was inspired to frame this exact 
law for Israel : "All the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of 
the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord's : it is holy unto 
the Lord. . . . And concerning the tithe of the herd, or of the 
flock, even of whatsoever passeth under the rod, the tenth shall 
be holy unto the Lord" (Lev. xxvii, 30-32). The tenth thus 
received was in turn appropriated to the house of Levi for the 
support of public worship, as the children of Levi were without 
an inheritance and were assigned to the service of the tabernacle ; 
and the Levites were themselves required to give a tenth of the 
tithes which they received from the people. Later, when the good 
King Hezekiah came to the throne of his wicked father Ahaz, he 
cleansed the temple, and reinstituted the religious rites and cere- 
monies; and it is stated, "The tithes of all things brought they 
in abundantly" (2 Chron. xxxi, 5). Again, when the gallant 
cupbearer, Nehemiah, had rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and 
restored the religious customs of the people, "Then brought all 
Judah the tithe of the corn and the new wine and the oil unto 
the treasuries" (Neh. xiii, 12). Among the Jews it was recog- 
nized that the tenth belonged to God. His giving could not 
commence until his tenth had been paid. In addition to the tithe 
which he paid, the faithful Jew also gave for the support of the 
annual feasts and for the poor, and was liberal in his freewill 
and trespass offerings. 

Finally, the Old Testament Scriptures close with a most 
startling presentation of this great theme. With the severity and 
directness of a prophet of God, Malachi seeks to arouse a lethargic 
people from their indifference: "Will a man rob God? Yet ye 
have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In 
tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have 
robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into 



YOUNG PEOPLE AND SCRIPTURAL GIVING 305 

the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house." This 
closing utterance of the Old Testament is like another rending 
of Sinai. The Father commences to inculcate the doctrine and 
duty of the tithe in Genesis through Melchizedek and Jacob; it 
runs with unmistakable and unbroken continuity throughout the 
entire Old Testament, until, in the closing book, in tones of 
thunder an offended and forsaken God calls his wandering chil- 
dren to a just account; then his wrath passes away, and with the 
tenderness of a mother's voice his promises of overwhelming 
mercies fall in sweetest cadences upon our souls ! 

When we reach the New Testament we find that the law of the New 
tithe has not been abrogated, for we hear Jesus saying in the J^K}? 16111 ^ 
Sermon on the Mount, "Think not that I am come to destroy the 
law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. 
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or 
one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled" 
(Matt, v, 17, 18). It is beyond credence that Christ would speak 
so minutely concerning the law as that not the slightest punctua- 
tion point shall be omitted, and not include a great law and custom 
upon which the maintaining of the worship of the temple and 
ancient tabernacle depended. But if some are seeking for ex- 
plicit command concerning the Christian duty of tithing they can 
find it unequivocally given in the words of our Lord: "Woe 
unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye pay tithe of 
mint and anise and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters 
of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have 
done, and not to leave the other undone" (Matt, xxiii, 23). 

There is a picturesque corroborative argument to these words A 
of Jesus given by the unknown writer of the book of Hebrews, A / r ^° e r n a t tive 
where in the seventh chapter he compares the quaint character 
of Melchizedek with our Master. He recalls and emphasizes in 
six different clauses the giving of tithes by Abraham to the king 
of Salem, and then speaks of "another priest" who has arisen, but 
who shall be a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. 
The logical conclusion is unavoidable, that if the paying of tithes 
was approved in Abraham as he offered his homage to the first 
Melchizedek, so the giving of the tenth would be part of the 
humble service to be rendered to that greater King of Peace, who 
shall be "a Priest forever." 

The second of the two great principles for the support of the 
20 



306 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



As God Hath 

Prospered 



Higher 
Achievements 



A Jewish 
Convert and 
the Tithe 



Lamentable 
Results 



cause of God is found in the New Testament clause, "Lay by in 
store as God hath prospered you." This teaching manifestly does 
not annul the doctrine of the tithe. It is our contention that the 
precise and emphatic Old Testament instruction concerning the 
tenth was accepted and practiced by the Christians of Paul's 
time ; and that after paying their tithe unto the Lord, a just obli- 
gation which each would acknowledge, then his giving would 
commence. It was from their freewill gifts, after the tenth had 
been paid, that they supported the general work which Paul was 
now conducting. The money that they were to "lay by in store" 
was for Paul's missionary work, that "there be no gatherings 
when I come," and was in addition to their offerings for the 
support of the church in Corinth. 

The New Testament principle of giving stands upon the 
shoulders of the Old Testament doctrine of paying, and reaches 
toward the higher achievements of the reign of Christ Emmanuel. 
The new commandment, "Love one another as I have loved you," 
does not controvert the Decalogue — it is the blossom and product 
of Sinai's great utterances. So giving "according to our ability," 
and "as God has prospered us," points out to the Christian the 
lofty altitudes of generous giving to which he may come, after 
he has discharged his honest debt as a faithful steward, in paying 
to God the tenth. The tenth is interest on the capital which has 
been loaned to us, and must be paid back before we can commence 
to give. We must be just before we are generous ! 

Let us imagine a case. Suppose a faithful Jew had become a 
convert to Christianity. As a Jew he was accustomed to paying 
his tithe. When on that first Sabbath after his conversion he 
assembled with the Christians and brought his offering to God, 
can anyone believe that this converted Jew would attempt to 
justify himself in giving less than he had given when he was a 
Jew? Would not his natural impulse be to add as much more to 
his offering as he felt the new religion to be more valuable to him 
than the old ? Certainly he would not give less when his blessings 
were more ! 

As a lamentable result of a failure to preach the scriptural 
doctrine of the tithe, it has been computed that, while the Church 
owns one fifth of the wealth of the United States, only one six- 
teenth of one per cent is given for evangelizing the heathen world. 
Under a mistaken idea that "giving as God hath prospered" was 



YOUNG PEOPLE AND SCRIPTURAL GIVING 2>°7 

a loftier basis of supporting the kingdom than the scriptural doc- 
trine of the tenth, the Christian Church is giving immeasurably 
less than the ancient Jews ; and every interest of Christ's kingdom 
is embarrassed for want of funds. "By their fruits ye shall know 
them" is our invincible dictum as Christians. In the face of 
failure, and depleted treasuries, and crippled enterprises, is it not 
time for us to ascend from our easy, theoretical, slothful, and 
sometimes vociferous levels of "according to your ability," and 
come up to the definite, just, honorable, and practical purpose of 
paying our tithes unto the Lord? 

Let us train our young people into exact, businesslike methods Businesslike 
of caring for the kingdom, and not withhold from them the truth Metnods 
taught in the Scriptures concerning definite and systematic giv- 
ing ! Let us cease desecrating the courts of the Lord's house, and 
in some cases, I fear, even the holy precincts of the sanctuary, 
with such questionable expedients as fairs and suppers, to make 
up for deficiences which have accrued because God's people are 
withholding even their tenth. 

Buddhism and Mohammedanism build their pagodas of jasper other 
and their mosques of alabaster, and with increasing tenacity pos- f^fjg 118 
sess the vast oriental world by the aid of the tithe. Mormonism Tithe 
spreads its loathsome cancer and befouls our republic with the 
putridity of polygamy ; and so rigorous are the leprous elders in 
the collection of the tithe that in the paying of wages one tenth 
of the coin is marked "tithing money" and may be used for noth- 
ing else than for the support of their infamous institution. 

If these enemies of the true faith thus promulgate their false 
systems, surely the friends of Christ should provide as much for 
the propagation of the truth that ennobles and sets free. And, 
moreover, if the ancient Jew gave a tenth for maintaining the 
Hebrew religion alone, recognizing as he did no obligation to any 
other peoples, under how much greater responsibility is the Chris- 
tian to give much more than the Hebrew, because the Christian's 
commission is to "go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to 
every creature !" 

If this scriptural method should be adopted, then history would Adoption 
repeat itself: the chests of the Lord would be bursting with s^Jural 
treasure; Azariah, the chief priest, would answer again, "Since Method 
the people began to bring the offerings into the house of the Lord, 
we have had enough to eat, and have left plenty : for the Lord 



308 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

hath blessed his people." And coronated Malachi would lean 
over the battlements of heaven and shout once more, "There shall 
be meat in my house. I will open the windows of heaven, and 
pour you out a blessing, and there shall not be room to receive it." 
Paramount The paramount work of the Church to-day is the training of 

Church tn e youth into scriptural habits of giving. Upon this education 

depends not only the character and usefulness of the young 
people, but the redemption of our republic from the thraldom of 
secularism, vice, and avarice ; and the evangelization of the whole 
world. Is it not painfully significant that the so-called "sub- 
merged tenth" of our population bears the same fraction as the 
tenth of our incomes which many are withholding? By the aid 
of God's tenth the submerged tenth will be rescued. In their 
quest for the Holy Grail this noblest knighthood that the world 
has ever seen must be taught that the heavenly vision is for those 
who serve and sacrifice : 

" Not what we give, but what we share, 
For the gift without the giver is bare ; 
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three : 
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." 

Christ's advice to the young man who came seeking counsel 
was, "If thou wouldst be perfect, go, sell that thou hast, and 
give." Ideal character is possessed only by those who most give. 
"Love and venerate ideals," said Mazzini to the young men of 
Italy. "Ideals are the word of God." If our young people would 
become revelations of God to their age they must obey the law of 
service and not the law of self. 

" That man may last, but never lives, 
Who much receives but nothing gives ; 
Whom none can love, whom none can thank, 
Creation's blot, creation's blank." 

"Slowly the Bible of the race is being writ." We crave for our 
youth that they may contribute some imperishable truths to this 
Last Testament. 
The Young In his human birth, Jesus Christ attracts the mothers to his 

Jesus nS cause; in his early years in Nazareth, he interests the children; 
in his lowly surroundings, makes himself the friend of the poor; 
in his grief and woes, finds followers among the sorrowing mul- 
titudes ; in his crucifixion, he draws all men unto himself ; and 



YOUNG PEOPLE AND SCRIPTURAL GIVING 369 

as the Young Man Redeemer, charms the young people of the 
world with his enchanting personality. Christianity needs the 
youth with their boundless faith and hope, and their fiery enthu- 
siasm. Young men won the battle of Marathon. Young men Young Men 
saved Paris during the French Revolution. Young men fought £k rv \ e e 
the battles of the American republic, liberated the slave, and estab- 
lished freedom upon enduring foundations. Three fourths of the 
soldiers of the civil war were under thirty years of age, and one 
half under twenty-four. In the recent conflict, when the suffering 
reconcentrados were relieved, and the Pearl of the Antilles slipped 
from the palsied hand of Spain, the brave warriors who achieved 
the victories in that war for humanity were mere boys — from the 
farm and factory and schoolroom. I saw twenty thousand of 
these noble comrades encamped at the Presidio, in California. 
One day when the Red Cross women were serving a sumptuous 
breakfast to a regiment which had just arrived from the middle 
West a good woman said to one of the soldiers, "How many 
lumps of sugar shall I put in your coffee ?" He replied, "I don't 
know; my mother always fixed it." The Church to-day wants 
the youth to come from the holy sanctuary of the mother-heart 
straight into the ranks of the army of the King, before they shall 
have been defiled by the contaminations of evil. 

It was a little girl who inspired the organization of the British 
Bible Society ; it was a Methodist young woman who gave to 
Robert Raikes the idea of the Sunday school ; it was another 
young woman whose writings resulted in the establishment of 
the Fresh Air Funds of all the large cities ; and one of our bishops 
declines the honor of originating the call for "Twenty Millions 
Twentieth Century Offering," and says that it was the product 
of the faith of a devoted Methodist girl. 

" So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 

So near is God to man, 
When duty whispers low, Thou must, 

The youth replies, I can." 

I cannot close this argument without begging your indulgence Protection 
to permit me to say that while the Church is educating and train- J™? 1 Evi1 
ing the young people into habits of giving it should demand for 
them proper protection from evil influences and impending 
calamities. The youth of the Church and of the nation are being 



310 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

destroyed by a devilish octopus of vice, which throws out its long 
tentacles of impure literature, and the saloon, with all its alluring 
abominations, Sabbath breaking, and blasphemy, a corrupting 
playhouse, a prostituted printing press, and impurity with its 
Satanic siren voices. At a dog show a few years ago in a 
Western State a sign was displayed which read, "Gentlemen will 
not smoke here; it will hurt the dogs." O, when shall the day 
dawn when men shall cease their wickedness because it hurts the 
boys! There will be more money and fervor and holy lives for 
the Church and all its missionary enterprises when the Church 
awakens to the power which it possesses and utterly destroys the 
destroyer of the youth, and makes licensed and protected vice 
impossible. 
The Service In training the youth into scriptural habits of giving we are 

Christ 1Vine teaching them that they are called to the service of a living Christ. 
A little crippled boy, who had received many kindnesses from 
some devoted deaconesses in their labors among the poor of a 
crowded city, was asked one day as he was presented with a 
little wagon in which he would be able to propel himself, "Do 
you believe Jesus died for you?" With eyes wide open with 
bewilderment, he replied, inquiringly, "Why, I thought Jesus 
Christ was alive." Jesus lives to-day in the holy lives and loving 
endeavor of his followers. We shall urge the youth to earnest 
habits of giving because he who gives most to Christ gets most 
from Christ and becomes most like Christ. Not only shall 
we behold 

" From eye to eye through all their order flash 
A momentary likeness of the King," 



Knighthood 



A Never- but our youth shall belong to a knighthood which shall never 

?"2i5moA perish, and as incarnations of the King shall press the battle for 

righteousness to the ends of the earth, and hold the citadels of 

truth, "until He come." 

" Mourn not for vanquished ages 

With their great historic men, 
"Who dwell in history's pages 

And live in the poet's pen, 
For the grandest days are before us, 

And the world is yet to see 
The noblest work of this whole earth 

In the men — and women — that are to be." 



MONEY AND MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL WORK 3II 

And to-day, as we bring to Christ our best youth with their 
best gifts, and ourselves with our truest consecration, methinks 
I can hear the angelic hosts about the throne shouting in gladdest 
hallelujahs, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, 
and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and 
blessing," while all the redeemed on the earth respond with a 
tumultuous antiphonal chorus, whose billows of melody shall 
dash against the throne of the Eternal, "Blessing, and honor, and 
glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and 
unto the Lamb forever and ever." 



WHAT MONEY MEANS FOR EDUCATIONAL 
WORK IN THE FOREIGN FIELDS 

The Rev. F. D. Gamewell, Ph.D. 

The effort to emphasize a need may overshadow the mind Money a 
with that need and distort the sense of proportion. While we ■ E ^ na ° an 
now turn our minds to the consideration of the need — deep, real, 
never greater than now — of money for the extension of the king- 
dom of God, we would that the Holy Spirit might so control our 
minds, and so speak to us of God, that money may appear only 
as a means to an end, and that end appear in its right relation to 
the purposes of God — always attainable through faith. 

I take it for granted that my subject may be stated "What 
Money Means for Christian Education in Foreign Fields," since 
the final object of mission educational work is the development 
of Christian character. 

It is no longer a question whether or not the people of the 
Orient are to be educated by the West. They are already in 
contact with the Western world, and they will have Western 
teaching. It rests with the Church to say whether or not they 
shall have that teaching divorced from Christianity and from the 
Christ who alone made possible this Western civilization. 

Mere contact with so-called Western civilization, without Western 
Christianity, has no uplifting power. The native city of Shang- ^honf 10 * 
hai lies beside the foreign settlement of Shanghai. The foreign Christianity 
settlement has paved streets, electric lights, magnificent dwell- 
ings, and a municipal government that keeps the streets in finest 
order ; yet side by side with this modern and well-kept city stands 



312 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A Christian 
Environment 



Centers of 
Influence 



Three Telling 
Banners 



the native walled city, unchanged through years of contact, and 
still one of the filthiest cities of the Chinese empire. 

Money means Christian education, which in turn means Chris- 
tian civilization. In his "Strategic Points in the World's Con- 
quest" Mr. Mott says, "After visiting all the various colleges of 
China and studying them with care we are convinced that no 
money is being expended that is yielding larger returns." Again 
Mr. Mott says, "If money is wisely poured into this work during 
the next few years it will do much to hasten the evangelization of 
the country and to give a truly Christian civilization to the China 
of the coming century." 

Money means the strengthening of institutions which are doing 
work while they sutler from inadequate equipment — institutions 
that, as Mr. Mott says, "are the hope of the country," institutions 
in which "are being trained the literati of the new China." We 
scarcely realize in these Western lands how much we owe to our 
Christian environment. In church, in school, in our homes, in 
all the walks of life, we are brought into contact with uplifting 
influences that permeate the very atmosphere of a land where 
God is known. On the other hand, over the lands where God is 
not known broods a spiritual malaria that saturates, depresses, 
and degrades life until there are produced the conditions pictured 
by the apostle Paul in the first chapter of Romans. 

Money establishes missions in such countries, and so provides 
for the formation of little centers of influence, into which the 
young people may be gathered out of the malarious atmosphere 
of heathenism, and there develop in the midst of surroundings 
that at least suggest the environment of a Christian civilization. 
Within the walls of the mission compound are the church, the 
schoolhouses, and the homes, and over all a healthful spiritual 
atmosphere. In this little Christian world there are many lessons 
and much strength absorbed by the students and other converts 
who attend morning and evening prayers, the weekly prayer 
meetings, the Sunday school and the church services, and fre- 
quent the homes of the missionaries. 

Money prepares a native ministry. You see hanging above 
this platform three banners. They bear the names of Chinese 
who died for the faith in the summer of 1900. On the banner 
hanging in the middle are the names of five Methodist preachers. 
The first is Chen Ta Yung. His father was the first convert 



MONEY AND MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL WORK 313 

received into the Methodist Episcopal Church of North China. 

The son also was converted and became our first preacher. So 

strong and true was he that years ago, when failure among the 

natives and other developments tried the courage of workers, 

one missionary remarked of this man, "As long as Chen Ta Faithful unto 

Yung remains true I have faith to hold on and believe in better 

days to come." Chen Ta Yung was killed with his wife and a 

son and a daughter. Another son of his is on the platform, and 

I shall have the pleasure of introducing him to you this morning. 

Next to Chen Ta Yung's name is that of Wang Cheng Pei. 
During the siege, while leading against an attack, he was struck 
by a bullet and mortally wounded. I was hurrying about my 
work on the fortifications when he was carried by on a stretcher. 
I followed, and when they laid him down I knelt beside him and 
said, "Cheng Pei, is it all right?" He knew what I meant, and 
said, "Yes, my body is in great pain, but my heart is at peace." 
One who was with him when he died said that he passed away 
in peace and quiet confidence, knowing Whom he believed. 
Thank God, this Gospel we preach is the power of God unto sal- 
vation to every one that believeth. 

The third name on the banner is Chou Hsueh Shen, a student 
of Peking University. The fourth is Li Chi Hsien. He was a 
graduate of that same institution. He was helping others 
through danger and was struck by a bullet and instantly killed. 
That name recalls the bright eager face of one ready and helpful 
during the first days of the siege. The last is the name of Li Te 
Jen, another graduate of the Peking University. He and his 
wife were killed outside the city during the terrible summer of 
1900. Two preachers prepared in the training school, three young 
evangelists the product of an advanced educational institution, 
strong in Christian character, serving the Lord through life, and 
with good courage dying for the faith. This is one answer to 
the question, "What money means for educational work — for 
character building." 

The banner on the right contains the names of one hundred Many 
and sixteen martyrs in the cities of Lan Chou and in Shan Hai ar yrs 
Kuan, a city at the beginning of the Great Wall, where it starts 
by the sea and stretches on for a distance of fifteen hundred 
miles to the great plains of Thibet. On this banner to your left 
we have the names of one hundred and thirty martyrs from the 



3H 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Higher 
Education 
in the 
United 
States 



The Largest 
Use of 
Wealth 



city of Tsunhua, where we had a most prosperous work. Since 
I have been in this Convention I have received a letter from one 
of our graduates who is now preaching the Gospel in that city. 
In bringing any people to God the natives must perform a large 
service. One thing that money means for educational work is 
the training of natives for leadership. 

Money means relatively more in the foreign field than it does 
in these home lands. Just as the meaning of a word depends 
upon its relationship to other words, so the meaning of money 
as an investment depends upon its relationship to other invest- 
ments. 

In the United States we have reached a point in our develop- 
ment where our educational work is on a scale of such magnitude 
that what would be a very significant sum in India or in China 
or in Japan is not specially significant in the United States. A 
report of an American university gives the assets of that uni- 
versity as twenty-one millions of dollars, and then states that 
there is needed ten million dollars to carry on the work of the 
institution, and that five million dollars additional is absolutely 
necessary if the demands upon the institution are to be met. 
What is one hundred thousand dollars beside such sums as these? 
Yet with one hundred thousand dollars our North China insti- 
tution would leap into an activity that would abound in results 
affecting the welfare of a nation of four hundred millions of 
people. I hold in my hand a clipping which announces that a 
lady has given twenty-five thousand dollars for an organ for one 
of our well-equipped universities. As I read the paragraph 
and thought of the fifty perpetual scholarships that amount would 
mean in India, Japan, Korea, and China, and of the message 
that through those scholarships would find those in darkness 
and the shadow of death, I longed that God would touch the 
hearts of those to whom he has intrusted his treasure, and help 
them to put it to the largest use. 

We are in the midst of a crisis that demands not only a large 
use of wealth, but demands that it be put to its largest possible 
use. I do not stand as a special pleader for China, but plead in 
behalf of the kingdom of God. I learned many lessons in 
Peking during the siege. We had a long line; it was held by 
all nationalities — part by the Japanese, part by the French, part 
by the Italians, part by the Americans, part by the English, and 



MONEY AND MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL WORK 315 

part by the Russians, Germans, Austrians. Wherever that line 
was hard pressed, there we rallied. We realized that failure at 
any one point meant failure at every point. And so in this con- 
quest of the world for Jesus Christ, wherever the line is hard 
pressed, there let us rally. 

I take great pleasure at this time in presenting to you the Chen Wei 
young man of whom I spoke — the son of the Rev. Chen Ta Yung, clie,lg 
Mr. Chen Wei Cheng. He graduated from Peking University 
in 1896. It was my privilege to hand him his diploma. Sir 
Robert Hart, inspector general of the Chinese customs, who has 
always been a friend of the university, offered to take its gradu- 
ates into the customs service. The salary there would be from 
twenty-five to seventy-five dollars per month. On the other hand, 
a preacher or a teacher in missionary work would never receive 
more than ten dollars a month. Mr. Cheng believed that his 
responsibilities demanded that he take service under Sir Robert. 
The missionaries believed such a move a mistake, and they talked 
with him and prayed constantly for him. But his first thought 
prevailed, and he took from me the letter that introduced him to 
Sir Robert. He passed the examination and had only to wait a 
day or two for an appointment to a lucrative position, but before 
that appointment came Mr. Chen returned in distress and asked 
for a place in the mission, saying that he had had no peace since 
undertaking to enter a merely money-making position. He now 
felt that his lifework must be in helping to dispel the darkness 
that shrouded so many of his people. He has been for several 
years a teacher in the Peking University. 

He went from Peking as China's delegate to the World's Stu- 
dent Christian Federation Conference in Denmark, and is now 
returning from there to China. I ask your attention and your 
prayers for the work of Christian education as he speaks for a 
few moments. 



316 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A Family of 
Martyrs 



Questions 
not to be 
Asked 



AN APPEAL FROM CHINA 

Mr. Chen Wei Cheng 

As I stand here I can hardly find words that are expressive 
enough to express my profound gratitude and deep appreciation 
of what you have done for us — all the young men in China who 
are being educated or who have been educated in Christian 
colleges. As you have been told, many of the students of our col- 
leges were called to witness to their faith with their lives. They 
did not count their lives dear to themselves. The speaker's par- 
ents and brother and sister were among the martyrs. There are 
millions of young men in China who are not educated or who 
have received a secular education. What we want is a Christian 
education. We would like to have men and women to come over 
and help us. I am not going to ask you for money, though I 
haven't any objection to accept any offer, but that is not my 
intention this morning. But we want men, we want that men 
and women may come, and with a readiness to suffer for Jesus 
Christ. I have been asked many a time, during my travels in 
this country, whether China is safe enough for missionaries to 
go there. Let those questions, Is it safe? Is it politic? Is it 
dangerous? — let those questions never be asked, because to ask 
these questions is to doubt our Lord's wisdom and his presence 
and his power. 



THE RESPONSIBILITY RESTING UPON THE 
DELEGATES TO THIS CONVENTION 

Mr. John R. Mott 

A Blaze of This is one of the most dangerous conventions that has ever 

Light b een h e id m th e interest of the missionary work of the Church. 

Seldom, if ever, has a body of earnest Christians been exposed 
to a more abundant blaze of light concerning the need of the 
world and the desires and purposes of our Saviour. It should 
lead us this morning to tremble as we think of the responsibility 
which rests upon us in the light of the plan of God and of the 
opportunity of the hour. We cannot relegate this responsibility 
to men holding certain official positions. The burden is so great 



THE RESPONSIBILITY OF DELEGATES 317 

that it will not be lifted unless every delegate of this Convention 
cheerfully yet humbly accepts the measure which God assigns to 
him. 

Our responsibility, in the first place, is to keep ourselves abreast 
of this wonderful movement; to keep ourselves informed in a 
larger measure than in the past concerning the missionary enter- 
prise. To do the will of God we must know the needs of man. The Will of 
It is inconceivable that we be perfectly certain that we are in the Need^o^Men 
place where God wishes us to be, and doing what he wants us to 
do, if we are not intelligent concerning the moral and religious 
conditions of two thirds of the human race. Too often there 
might be addressed to us the words, which our Saviour used in 
an entirely different connection, "Ye do err, not knowing the 
Scriptures, nor the power of God." If there is any place where 
the power of God is being manifested more than elsewhere to-day 
it is in connection with this extension of Christ's kingdom in non- 
Christian lands. We should therefore be ambitious, as good 
churchmen, to keep informed concerning the kingdom of Jesus 
Christ, its extent, its difficulties and problems, its history and 
achievements, its resources and possibilities. We should be satis- 
fied with nothing less than the world-wide horizon of Jesus Christ- 
I can think of no better creed for us to take as we go forth than 
that of St. Augustine, "A whole Christ for my salvation, a whole 
Bible for my staff, a whole Church for my fellowship, and a whole 
world for my parish." 

Our responsibility is not only to keep ourselves informed, but An 
also to assist in carrying forward a thoroughgoing campaign of cratSaoSi 
missionary education. This campaign must be extensive. We Campaign of 
need something that corresponds to the Tractarian Movement. 
We should have documents to distribute by the millions instead 
of by tens of thousands. 

The campaign must be also continuous if we are to meet the 
successive opportunities as they present themselves. It must be 
under very wise leadership, for there is no more difficult task than 
that of educating people concerning their responsibilities in an 
intense age like this, when it is so difficult to arrest and to hold 
the attention upon the plans of God. It will involve the expendi- 
ture of more money than we may have realized or possibly thought 
wise. But there could be no better use of money. 

Our responsibility includes the helping to adopt a comprehen- 



Education 



3i» 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A Compre- 
hensive 
Policy 



Enlarged 
Financial 
Cooperation 



sive plan and a statesmanlike policy, with reference to the mis- 
sionary opportunity of our Church. We need a comprehensive 
policy in the sense that we take the whole world into our thought, 
as do the Jesuits. It should be comprehensive, also, in the sense 
that it spans the generation which we are seeking to serve. We 
should strive to do the fair thing by the whole generation to which 
we belong, and not be occupied chiefly with emergencies. Our 
policy should be statesmanlike in that we relate ourselves to all 
the existing agencies being employed by different Churches, ob- 
serving faithfully the principles of comity which, as Bishop 
Thoburn has pointed out, if properly observed throughout the 
world, would yield a result the equivalent of adding thousands 
of new missionaries. 

It should be statesmanlike also in that we avail ourselves of the 
abundant resources of our Church. We should, like the European 
Powers, in adopting their naval programs and budgets, look down 
through the generation and wisely distribute our burdens over 
the years and bring up all forces to meet our opportunities. 

I have talked recently with some of the wealthiest men of the 
country concerning the methods and plans of missionary organi- 
zations, and I have formed the impression that they will be most 
responsive to a plan which seems to be adequate to meet the needs 
of our generation. 

We are responsible also to help to enlarge greatly the financial 
cooperation of the Church. There is need in our time of more 
heroic and self-denying giving. There is need of the propaga- 
tion, in every pulpit and periodical, of the doctrine that we are 
trustees, not simply of one tenth, but of all that we possess ; and 
that we are responsible to God not only for the good use of our 
money, but for its best use. The principle laid down by Living- 
stone is scriptural and should be emphasized, to attach no value 
to anything we have or may possess, except in its relation to the 
kingdom of Jesus Christ. We should aim to secure next year 
not less than three million dollars for the work of the Missionary 
Society. It is not a chimerical scheme, but eminently sensible 
and practicable, to work for and to expect an average of one 
dollar from every member and probationer. Thirty years ago we 
were only giving forty-five cents a member, and we are only 
giving that much to-day. If it be objected that that was a time 
of inflated currency I would remind you that even ten years ago, 



THE RESPONSIBILITY OF DELEGATES 319 

when the currency was not inflated, we were not giving appre- 
ciably less than we are giving now per member ; and in the mean- 
time our Church has grown not only in membership, but markedly 
in wealth and prestige, thus greatly increasing her responsibility. 
If we give a dollar per member this year we will still be giving 
less than the Presbyterians and Congregationalists give per mem- 
ber for foreign missions. 

The time has come when we should strike also for large en- Large 
dowments for different parts of our missionary plant. I attended Endowments 
the meeting of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign 
Missions at Oberlin a few days ago, and there the chairman, the 
Hon. S. B. Capen, sounded the call for a million and a half dol- 
lars for about fifteen colleges connected with that board. In my 
judgment we ought to have not less than a million of dollars for 
the colleges of the Methodist Episcopal Church. I have had the 
privilege of visiting and inspecting most of them. Where in the 
realm of Methodism could we spend to better advantage one 
million dollars than in connection with those noble institutions of 
learning in China, Japan, and India? The Protestant Episcopal 
Church the other day appointed a committee to raise one million 
dollars with which to endow the missions of one of their most 
restricted fields, the Philippines. We need to adjust ourselves to 
larger opportunities. The statement given out a few days ago 
by the secretary of the Twentieth Century Thank Offering enter- 
prise indicated that the fund had passed a little over the $18,000,- 
000 mark. It was also stated that of that $18,000,000 only 
$50,000 is assigned to the work of the Missionary Society, or one 
three-hundred-and-sixtieth of the total. If you add the $400,000 
promised to the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, it makes 
only one fortieth of the total sum thus far subscribed to the great 
task of the world's evangelization. There is probably not a con- 
scientious Christian here this morning who would differ from 
me when I state that if Jesus Christ were among us, looking over 
our plans, estimates, and achievements, he would say we are not 
making a fair distribution. 

There must also be a greater offering of lives for the foreign a Greater 
missionary service. In studying the statistics of the Missionary J?^ 1115 ° f 
Society lately I noticed that there has been a net increase of only 
about two new missionaries each year for the past five years. 
Adding the new workers sent out by the Woman's Society, it 



320 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Missionary 
Pastors 



A Personal 
Appeal 



The 

Ministry of 
Intercession 



makes a total annual increase of about ten or eleven for the past 
five years. The Presbyterian Board last year alone sent out over 
seventy new missionaries. They have no larger field, no larger 
opportunity or responsibility, and I believe they have no larger 
ability. Bishop McCabe, Bishop Hartzell, Bishop Thoburn, 
Bishop Moore, and Dr. Drees, in response to a question sent them 
recently, asking how many new men are needed at once in order 
to carry forward the work we have on hand and to grapple with 
our present opportunity, replied giving statistics which foot up 
to 248 new foreign workers. 

We need more pastors who are ambitious to raise up missionary 
candidates from among their people. I learned of one church 
in England that out of a membership of three hundred has during 
the past ten years furnished from among its own membership 
thirty-two volunteers, of whom twenty are already on the foreign 
field, three others are being prepared, and the remaining nine have 
been rejected as not having the necessary qualifications. I appeal 
also to college presidents and professors that they seek to lay 
even greater stress upon developing the missionary possibilities 
of our institutions of higher learning. We want more colleges, 
with a missionary record like that of Ohio Wesleyan, Oberlin, 
Northwestern, Mount Holyoke, and Cambridge. 

May it not be that God is calling some of the delegates of this 
Convention to offer ourselves to meet the immediate needs of the 
Missionary Society ? May it not be that some young pastors who 
are at influential posts at home, and some of the younger pro- 
fessors in our colleges, are far more needed to-day at strategic 
points on the mission field ? May the Lord of the harvest, whose 
it is to separate laborers unto the work whereunto he has called 
them, do his own work among us as we yield ourselves without 
prejudice and with openness of mind and heart to his gracious 
influence. 

Our responsibility implies that we give ourselves individually 
to the ministry of intercession with greater fervor, definiteness, 
and faith than heretofore; and that on our return to our homes 
we seek to call forth a larger volume of prayer on behalf of world- 
wide missions. I despair of our doing the other things that have 
been urged upon us here, unless this thing be done. I not only 
despair of it, but I do not expect it. My reason and faith stagger 
at the tasks before us unless we be more faithful in prayer. If 



CHRIST OUR LIVING LEADER 321 

we are to become like Christ in other things we must become like 
him in prayer. Everything really vital to this missionary enter- 
prise hinges on prayer. The raising up of the laborers is God's 
answer to prayer. Laborers going forth as God-sent men is a 
result of prayer. The giving of money with such purity of 
motive that it becomes irresistible in its working is a product of 
prayer. The battering down of the great walls of opposition that 
confront the laborers on the mission fields can be accomplished 
only through prayer. The commanding of the power of the un- 
seen world to descend upon the laborers in lonely, distant fields 
is the work of prayer. Every great spiritual movement that 
reminds men that God is in the place is the result of prayer. Let 
us be faithful in the use of this force. Every other method will 
be made most effective by the employment of this one. Without 
it any method is comparatively superficial and fruitless. Remem- 
ber the desire of Spurgeon : "O that we might have five hundred 
Elijahs, each one upon his Mount Carmel, making incessant men- 
tion of the mission cause in prayer ! Then that little cloud that is 
after all no larger than a man's hand would spread and spread 
until it darkened the heavens and the great showers would descend 
upon the thirsty earth." 

Let us go forth from this Convention not in a spirit of elation 
because of what we have accomplished here, but in the spirit of 
humility, recognizing the movings of the Spirit of God in our 
midst. "Let us," in the words of Neesima, "advance upon our 
knees !" 



CHRIST OUR LIVING LEADER 

Mr. Robert E. Speer 

When we declare Jesus Christ to be his religion ; when we jesus Christ 
assert that he himself is the essence, the fundamental principle, ** ?"! 
the center and the outermost bound of it, we at once take a posi- 
tion on one side of the greatest theological question of our day 
or of any day, namely, the relationship of Jesus Christ to Chris- 
tianity. There are those who say that Jesus Christ is separable 
from his religion. The editor of a New York ex-religious paper 
recently published an article in his journal in which he took the 
ground that the essence of Christianity is not what Jesus Christ 
21 



322 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

was, or what Jesus Christ did, but what Jesus Christ said, and 
that any man who is in sympathy with the life that Jesus Christ 
praised is a Christian, no matter whether he is a Buddhist, or a 
Mohammedan, or a polytheist; that, in a word, Jesus Christ can 
be eliminated from his religion, and the religion itself, in its essen- 
tial character, will still remain. And while Harnack does not 
take such an extreme view as that, and is not consistent in his 
own statement, yet in What Is Christianity ? he says, as clearly 
as anyone can say, that the Christological aspect of Christianity 
was something foisted upon it from outside, and not incorporated 
in it by our Lord himself ; in other words, that it is quite possible 
to take Jesus Christ out of his faith, and to have left everything 
that is fundamental and essential to it. 
The Way, As over against this view, we who are gathered here this even- 

and thTlife m £ ^°^ ^ iat J esus Christ and his religion cannot be separated ; 
that he is his religion ; that whoever enters that religion does 
not so much enter his ethics as enter him, does not so much 
attach himself to his institutions as attach himself to his life. 
And we cannot go back to the days in which Christianity began, 
and listen to the words of Him who is still his faith, without un- 
derstanding from him directly that it is impossible to divorce him 
from his religion and have his religion left. "I am the Way, and 
the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father, but 
by me. The bread which I will give is my flesh, which I will 
give for the life of the world. I, if I be lifted up, will draw 
all men unto me. I am the bread of life. I am the light of 
the world. He that seeth me, seeth the Father. I and the 
Father are one." 
Jesus and the And if it be replied, as Harnack does reply, that all this is just 
in John's lens and not in the Gospel, that it is the way John felt 
about Jesus and not what Jesus said about himself, we reply that 
in one passage in the synoptic gospels, a passage, so far as I know, 
not disputed by radical criticism, Jesus Christ speaks as plainly as 
John reports him in the fourth gospel, regarding the indissoluble 
relationship between him personally and his faith. "No man," 
he saith, in the eleventh chapter of Matthew, "knoweth the Son 
but the Father, and no man knoweth the Father save the Son and 
he to whom the Son willeth to reveal him." Those of us gathered 
here this evening are quite willing to take our Lord Jesus Christ 
as authority on the question as to what constitutes his religion. 



Father 



CHRIST OUR LIVING LEADER 323 

Jesus Christ himself in his faith, and whoever eliminates him, 
though he has something left that is better than Buddhism or 
Mohammedanism, has not Christianity as it came from Him who 
declared that whoever would have life must eat him, his flesh, and 
drink him, his blood. 

The way the apostle Paul puts the whole core of the Gospel The Living, 
in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians illustrates the point Christ"* 
that I am trying to make clear at the outset, that Jesus Christ him- 
self is his religion : "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching 
vain, and your faith is also vain." He could not have conceived 
of a religion in which a polytheist or an atheist could sit down 
on equal terms with himself, and from which Jesus Christ, with 
all his personal revelation of the Father, and his personal redeem- 
ing work that nobody but he could do in the world, was to be 
utterly excluded and eliminated. When he thus laid the emphasis 
upon the living, personal Christ as the whole foundation of the 
Christian faith he emphasized for our time as well as for that first 
time the perpetual place of the living Christ in his religion. His 
religion is not a body of propositions, necessary as they are. His 
religion is not an erected institution. His religion is not a clear 
and convincing ethics. His religion is a living Lord, incorporated 
in human life once, nineteen hundred years ago, and incorporated 
in human life as really and as truly to-day. Surely a gathering of 
this Church ought to be the last spot on earth where it would be 
necessary even to emphasize overmuch the great truth that Jesus 
Christ is alive to-day in the experience of men; that to-day, as 
truly as nineteen hundred years ago, he has appeared, not to 
Cephas only and to the five hundred, and last of all to Paul, but 
to you and me too, so that we can say of a truth, differently, per- 
haps, in the way, but yet really with the same authority as John, 
"What my eyes have seen, and my ears have heard, and my hands 
have handled of the Word of life, declare I unto you." 

And this belief in the living Christ as himself the essential The Dis- 
principle of his faith is, after all, the radically distinguishing Etaaenthf 
thing of our religion. It is this that separates it from all other Christianity 
religions in the world. Christianity is not superior to all other 
religions in the world primarily because its book is better than 
other books — although its book is better. It is not primarily 
superior to other religions because it establishes more pure and 
satisfactory social institutions than they can supply — although it 



324 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

does. It is not superior because it reveals to man primarily a 
better method of life than they display. It is different from other 
religions and superior to them because it sustains to a Person 
who was and who is a relation that no other religion sustains to 
any great character in history or in life. You can separate every 
other religion, even Islam, from its founder and have the religion 
left; but you cannot separate Christianity from Christ and have 
left what he regarded as Christianity, and what all those who 
have his commission must likewise regard as the essential Chris- 
tian faith. 

It is this that distinguishes our religion not alone from other 
religions, but from all defective forms of it, from the overinstitu- 
tional side of it on one side, from the overmoralization of it on 
the other. Our religion is not a fine body of forms and ideas of 
worship, or even a great and coherent system of moral principles 
— although it is both of these things; our religion is a living 
Person who came from God nineteen hundred years ago and is 
here still. 
A Great If we will go back to the first days and think how Christianity 

conviction* must have appeared to the men who got their impressions of it 
fresh from the Lord himself we shall understand how essential 
it is that we get firm hold of this great evangelical conviction. 
They followed what? Only Christ. It was not the work of 
Christ that constituted the Christianity of John and James and 
Peter. The work of Christ had not been done. The shadow of 
the cross had not yet fallen across their lives. It was not the 
institution of the Church that constituted Christianity to them; 
the Church had not yet been established in the world. It was not 
the doctrine of Christ ; they did not know what things they were 
that he said to them. What constituted Christianity to those first 
disciples was a living, personal relation to Jesus Christ himself, 
which they perceived from the beginning to be a different type 
of relationship from that which exists between one man and 
another man, and which before the three years of their inter- 
course had expired they understood in a clearer and diviner 
form still. 
The Lord of You cannot turn back to the gospels and trace there the rising 

levels of the calls of Christ without seeing how really the living 
Christ himself was his faith to those men. First it was "Follow 
me ;" then it was "Come unto me ;" then it was "Learn of me ;" 



Life 



CHRIST OUR LIVING LEADER 325 

then it was "Abide in me;" and then, last of all, before he went 
away — I say it reverently, because I believe it is true — it was, 
"Be I." "As my Father hath sent me into the world, even so 
send I you into the world." And when at last he parted from 
them it was only that he might be forever and more really with 
them, in a way removed now from all the accidents of time and 
space, to be henceforth, more vitally than ever before, their living, 
present, guiding Saviour. 

I lay emphasis on this at the beginning — what I may call the The Double- 
double-facedness of Christianity. We stand in the midst of days chrisUanity 
when the longing of men for living fellowship with the unseen is 
more powerful than it has ever been. The mind cure, Christian 
Science, and all that, are merely expressions of the irrepressible 
longing of humanity for vital contact with the living God. Feel- 
ing runs wild without the checks that can be furnished only by 
the actual historic facts out of which religion sprang and back to 
which religion must always go to correct itself of the vagaries 
of the single era or the single mind. It is a great thing about our 
faith that the light of the knowledge of the glory of God shone 
not alone in a face that was, but shines to-day in a face that is ; 
that we cannot alone go back and check our faith by the historic 
revelation embodied in the history of the first Christian century, 
but that here to-day the faith is living in the midst of us. And the 
face that was is the face that is, and the light of the knowledge 
of the glory of God that was beheld in it by the men who walked 
with him on earth may be beheld in it still by those of us who will 
walk with him to-day. 

We are prone overmuch in these days to take our spiritual Secondhand 
experience at second hand. Our fathers dreamed, and we live on |xperienee 
the testimony of their vision. We are ever too prone to go to 
the accredited experience of others instead of going to Christ to 
get our own testimony fresh from him. But there is enough of 
original faith left in the midst of us here this evening for scores 
in this gathering to be able to testify, as indubitably as John or 
Peter or Paul could have testified, that the Christ who was is 
the Christ who is; that he was not all walled up in Joseph's 
tomb, but is alive to-day in the experience of men, in their 
thought, their affections, their wills, as truly as he ever has 
been alive in any past age. We have in our faith a living, 
present Christ. 



326 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



The Hunger 

for 

Leadership 



The 

Mastership 
of Christ 



In the second place, our religion is not alone the religion of a 
present, living Christ constituting the essence of our faith, but, 
what is just as important in it, as I have been saying, is that Christ 
is here to lead men, to lead them, in living, conscious guidance of 
their lives to-day, and to mark out for them day by day, every 
act, and every path in which their feet may tread. Every religion 
that has ever gained any mastery over the wills of men has been 
a religion that supplied the deep hunger in the hearts of men for 
leadership. Even where the founders of great religions did not 
intend to exalt themselves into the place of supreme leadership 
they have of necessity been placed there. It was no part of 
Buddha's idea that he should be worshiped by those who should 
embrace his teachings. Nothing was further from the mind of 
Confucius than that all over the Chinese empire millions of men 
should worship him, practically as a deity. And while Moham- 
med thought much of himself he scarcely could have seen the 
place that his followers have given him in his religion. The 
hunger of men to follow some heroic leader is so deep, so irre- 
pressible, that it must break out in every faith, and no religion 
ever laid hold on the hearts of men that did not furnish them 
with a great sovereign leadership, and no great discipleship has 
ever existed in the world that did not find expression in the most 
loyal and complete following and surrender of life. Jesus de- 
manded this of those who were to follow him : "If any man serve 
me, let him follow me." "If any man will come to me, let him 
deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." He 
understood that no discipleship was worthy of the name that was 
not the utter surrender of the lives of those who followed to the 
mastery of him who led. The glory of our Christian faith is that 
it furnishes, as no other force in the world has ever furnished, a 
perfect leadership, and the passion of a great discipleship. 

I was looking over the Greek concordance a little while ago for 
the different words that are translated by our English word 
"Master," as applied to Christ. The first of them was just the 
simple word "Teacher," the word that those two disciples used 
that first day of all, when, as they saw him walking, they said, 
"Rabbi," which is, being interpreted, Master, Teacher, "where 
dwellest thou?" It was the word that Mary used as she stood at 
the door of Christ's open tomb, when she said, "Rabboni" — Mas- 
ter — which is, being interpreted, Teacher. Just above that level 



CHRIST OUR LIVING LEADER 327 

came the next, in the word that was used only once by our Lord 
himself in the passage, "Neither be ye called masters : for one is 
your Master, even Christ." That word literally means ''Leader" 
— one who goes before, after whom the company comes. On the 
level just above that came the other word, found only in the gospel 
of Luke, six times there, the word that is used by Simon Peter 
that night after the fruitless fishing, when he said, "Master, we 
have toiled all night and taken nothing ; nevertheless at thy word 
I will let down the net" — "Overseer" it means. On the level 
above that is the commonest word of them all, the word that our 
Lord uses in the Sermon on the Mount, when he told his 
disciples and the people who listened to him, "No man can serve 
two masters : for either he will hate the one, and love the other ; 
or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other." And just 
one level above that is the word that Paul uses in the Epistle to 
Timothy, where he declares that if a man will purge himself from 
the uncleanness of which he has been speaking he may be "a 
vessel unto honor, sanctified and meet for the Master's use." 
Despotes is the Greek word, the absolute authority over life. 
Christ is Master of life in an actual and real sense. 

Our religion stands, my friends, in a faith in a Christ who is Five Charac- 
alive, for one thing ; also in a Christ who is alive to lead the lives ^ ris ^ ics of 
of those who love and trust in him. But if we ask ourselves how Leadership 
we may be sure of Christ's leadership of our life, knowing that it 
is not our caprice or whim that is guiding us, but Christ's own 
living hand directing our life, I think it will help us if we pause 
for a moment to ask ourselves what the characteristics of Christ's 
leadership are. There are five great characteristics of great 
leadership. It is essential to truly great leadership that a man 
should have come up from among the midst of those whom he 
proposes to lead — Martin Luther, Oliver Cromwell, Abraham 
Lincoln, for example. It is essential, in the second place, that he 
should still be one of them in sympathy and affection, knowing 
their lot and sharing it. There are certain men in this land who 
claim to be leaders now, but are not and never will be ; men who 
sit in the comfortable possession of their millions and inveigh 
against the conditions of life that make millions possible as a 
great wrong, although they themselves were perfectly willing to 
take advantage of those conditions. A man who would lead life 
to-day, as in the past, must be a man who is still in sympathetic 



328 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

contact with those whom he would lead; a man who believes in 
his cause and who is willing to sacrifice anything for his cause. 
I don't know the psychology of old John Brown's mind, but he 
set before men an example of what it was to believe in a great 
cause and be willing to die for it ; and millions of men marched 
side by side singing to John Brown's memory, because the spirit 
of the old man had been the spirit of leadership, belonging alone 
to those who believe in causes and are willing to yield up their 
lives that those causes may live. A fourth characteristic of good 
leadership is that a man's cause should be a great and worthy 
cause, something that can touch and grasp the imagination A 
fifth characteristic is that a man should believe in the sure success 
of his cause with an unconquerable faith. 
Jesus Christ I think of Jesus Christ as one who combines, as no other living 

Siader Preme ^ eac ^ er °^ men ever nas combined, these five great essentials of 
leadership. He came up from among us, having drunk out of 
our cup, having tasted of our infirmities, having been tempted in 
all points like as we are, fit therefore to be our High Priest and 
Guide. He lives still in the midst of us, sharing our sufferings 
and enduring our pains. He believed in the most splendid vision 
ever held up before the eyes of men, and he counted life itself a 
little thing, to be laid down for the attainment of that vision. And 
he assuredly believed that at the end of all the suffering and the 
sacrifice for himself and for those who were to come after him 
there was absolute and certain victory. And if we want to be 
sure whether or not we are following in our lives the living lead- 
How to Test ership of Jesus Christ we may test it by applying to our sense of 
his mastery and guidance of our life these tests, and by asking 
ourselves whether in our own lives there are present those quali- 
ties of spirit which marked Jesus Christ in his life, and which will 
mark all of the life that Jesus Christ ever leads in the world, the 
sense of a great and splendid mission to be performed, a mission 
not optional, but obligatory, not to be stated in any terms of 
general philanthropy or benevolence, but a mission of absolute 
necessity for the redemption of the world. I saw in one of our 
most evangelical magazines the other day a review of a recent 
book on missions in which the writer took the ground that the 
only fault to be found with this book was that it set the missionary 
spirit in an indefensible place, because it claimed for it the right 
to absolute precedence in every Christian heart. That was only 



Utter 
Fearlessness 



CHRIST OUR LIVING LEADER 329 

the place that Jesus Christ assumed that it would have. And if 
we want to be sure whether or not in our lives the mastery of 
Christ is present we may test it, for one thing, by finding out 
whether or not there the mission of the love of Christ for the 
world has the first and consuming place. We may test it by 
asking whether that place is so first and consuming that we 
despise every small sacrifice that may need to be made for the 
sake of the service of the mission, and go out in utter fearlessness 
to the great task that lies before us to do, hesitating not one 
moment at any sacrifice that it demands, rejoicing in all the great 
difficulties and obstacles that need to be overcome. It was said 
of Glave by Stanley that he was one of the men who relish a task 
for its bigness, and who greet hard labor with a fierce joy. The 
spirit which belongs to those who follow the living leadership of 
Jesus Christ is a spirit of utter fearlessness of obstacles or im- A Spirit of 
pediments, whether they lie on the mission field or in lethargy and 
carelessness or indifference in the Church at home. It is a spirit 
of utter fearlessness of cavil and criticism and conventionality, 
of all those costs and penalties that need to be met in the discharge 
of any great mission ; the spirit that our Leader kindles in those 
who follow him in the spirit of utter devotion to his cause. If 
Jesus Christ, my friends, is to be the leader of our lives, believe 
me, a great many of those little sacrifices and self-indulgences in 
which we play and by which we coddle our souls out of all the 
courage, the heroic sacrifice of Christ's cause, will die utterly out 
of our lives. In his book on The Varieties of Religious Expe- 
rience Professor James, of Harvard, in speaking of the absolute 
necessity of our finding in this day some moral substitute for war, 
says that the growth of the spirit of Christianity in the world 
makes it impossible for men to go out and openly kill one another 
in cold blood for nothing or to engage in wars which have no 
necessary place in the creation of the world's character, and yet 
we need its discipline and moral fruits. What substitute can 
be found for it, unless it be a sort of heroic sense of frugality, of 
hunger after poverty for the sake of a cause ? He is not speaking 
of things from a missionary point of view, but if only we could 
revive again the love of sacrifice as the Catholic Church has never 
lost it, it would bring into the missionary treasury more than it 
could use of money and raise up men and women who would 
scorn selfish power and position as secondary and unessential 



33Q 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Interdenom- 
inational 
Cooperation 



things while they yielded their lives utterly to the cause and the 
sacrifices that it demands. 

I cannot forbear saying just one word about one other charac- 
teristic of Jesus Christ's leadership of his people in this great 
warfare. I cannot believe myself that he would set his brigades 
at internecine war, that he would appoint two regiments to hold 
precisely the same intrenchments, that he would duplicate his 
forces or waste life. And surely as we go out in the campaign of 
this new century we believe the Lord's leadership of his army if 
we do not go as one united host, with no controversy or quarrel- 
ing, no jealousy or envy or bitterness among us, each band willing 
to do its own work. What matter, after all, whether you do it 
or we do it? 

"Others shall sing the song, 
Others shall right the wrong, 
Finish what I begin, 
And all I fail of win. 



"What matter I or they, 
Mine or another's day, 
So the right word be said, 
And life the sweeter made.' 



A Sure and 

Perfect 

Conquest 



I speak to the young men and the young women of your church 
here this evening, in behalf of the young men and the young 
women of my own church. We have got to do this thing, if we 
are ever going to do it, hand in hand, with the most perfect con- 
fidence and sympathy. I don't care whether you lead, or who 
leads. If you have the spirit of leadership in you, go and lead. 
We will follow. All that is necessary is that those who follow this 
common Leader should follow him as brothers standing together ; 
and everything that denies that unity of campaign, that common 
spirit, denies also the leadership of Jesus Christ. 

One other characteristic of his leadership is that absolutely 
nothing can stand in the way of his sure and perfect conquest. 
We listen to all that Bishop Thoburn says, and believe it, because 
back of it we feel a great and an impregnable faith. If we 
follow Jesus Christ as the living leader of life we shall believe 
with all our souls in the absolute invulnerability of this enterprise 
of ours and the absolute certainty of its victory. It is one ad- 
mirable thing that Mr. Kidd is doing in his books, namely, 



CHRIST OUR LIVING LEADER 33 1 

convincing feeble-hearted Christians, weak in their courage, that, 
after all that tide of power that poured into the world eighteen 
hundred years ago from the cross and life of Jesus Christ is an 
omnipotent tide of power, and, though it may from age to age 
appear now and then to stop in its course, the absolutely certain 
end of it all — who knows but the eyes of some of us here to-night 
may see it ! — a crown of glory upon the brow that was once torn 
with its crown of thorns, and a world won. 

I am sure that many of us here this evening will find difficulty Christ's 
in yielding our lives up to the practical, conduct-controlling faith J* ode . °* 
that Jesus Christ is now in a living way leading our lives, unless 
we can understand something of the mode of his leading of us. I 
believe he leads life by our acceptance of the principles that he 
taught. We call this merely ethical, but it is not right that we 
should surrender to those outside of the Christian Church all 
the power that resides in the conviction that no other force in 
this world is comparable with the force which resides in the 
application to life of the principles embodied in the character and 
teachings of Jesus Christ. He leads men now in proportion to 
the fearlessness with which every day they apply to their lives the 
principles of Jesus Christ : n their conduct with men and women 
at home, in all the social relations of their life. Believe me, it is 
a far harder thing than we know. Some who have felt very 
pious here in this Convention will get mad at a porter on the way 
home. Many a man who has been lifted to the seventh heaven 
in some holiness meeting has gone home to be petulant and 
irritable with his little children. The solid application of the 
simple principles of Jesus Christ to honest living is a far harder 
thing than we know; and we should see more visions in the 
seventh heaven if we lived an honester life on the plane where 
Christ's simple principles come home to practical application in 
daily living, and should discern his leadership more clearly. 

He guides us also by his providence in the world. I read war A Guiding 
in terms of the guiding hand of Jesus Christ. War after war has rovl ence 
been fought in this world. Men fight for their own ambition, to 
overthrow thrones and to uphold them. We know, as we read 
them now in the light from the face of Christ, that all these 
things only play into his great purposes in the world, and that by 
every contingency, every upheaval of human life, Christ Jesus is 
guiding us a little more clearly to his certain goal. He guides us 



33* 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Convictions 
Formed in 
Prayer 



Environment 
and Tradition 



by more supernatural ways than these — by his life abiding in the 
souls of men as truly as it abode in the soul of Paul ; by the super- 
natural intervention of his Spirit in this and that decision of life. 
Surely we would not exclude the present intervention of the 
Spirit of God in the lives of men. We may interpret it in different 
ways. I think it is ministered to us far more than we are willing 
to see, by negative guidance. It was no direct and positive lead- 
ing that took Paul down to where he got his call over into 
Macedonia. "They were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach 
the word in Asia. After they were come to Mysia, they essayed 
to go into Bithynia : and the Spirit suffered them not." And so 
by means of negative guidance Paul moved right down to where 
the man of Macedonia waited for him. If we were only moved 
like Paul we would get nearer to the mission field. If we were 
only willing to start when the Spirit of God impels, and try this 
door and that door, until at last we come to the spot where the 
vision stands, we should see as Paul saw. 

I believe that every right conviction formed in prayer is the 
supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. Ransom Dunn, one of the 
greatest Free Baptist ministers of the country, when asked, 
"What supernatural evidences have you that you are called to 
the ministry?" replied, "I have a deep and settled conviction that 
it is a duty, and I believe it is the Holy Spirit that produces this 
conviction." If only more of us would believe that in these ways 
the Holy Spirit can make plain to us the guidance of Christ more 
of us would be following that guidance into positions of heroism 
and difficulty, and would be waging that war in which the Leader 
whom we follow would fain direct us, where it needs most to be 
waged. 

I make room in my own thought of the guidance of Jesus 
Christ for his broad play upon the thoughts and feelings of men. 
There is not an independent man in this house to-night. Each 
one of us is shaped far more than we know by environment and 
tradition. One of the active minds of his Church, Professor Nash, 
of Cambridge, is reported to have said the other day in the 
Church Congress at Albany that he regarded himself as one 
twentieth independent, and the other nineteen twentieths as caught 
in the grip of great movements from which he could not hold him- 
self free. I think as I do because my father felt and thought as 
he did, because the stream of tradition is carrying me, uncon- 



CHRIST OUR LIVING LEADER 333 

sciously to myself, in a certain direction. I rejoice to believe 
that the guidance of Jesus Christ embraces these great tendencies 
of which we are not aware, that far and wide, all over the world, 
he is molding the thoughts of men, creating a better air for us, a 
cleaner atmosphere to breathe, making for us a new position 
from which we will be lifted up to heroisms which we would 
never for ourselves choose by sheer will. In one way or another, 
the Christ who has lived and lives would lead every one of us 
vitally in the service in which he moves on ahead of us. 

What I have to say this evening would not be complete if I a 
should not say in closing that I believe it is possible for us to be ^p^™™" 888 
conscious of the present guidance of the living Christ as truly as Guidance 
of the presence one of another here in this room to-night. I have 
been going over this last summer some of the letters of George 
Bowen, whom William Taylor called "the lamb of India," a man, 
as you know, of rare and saintly godliness of character, whose 
memory lingers still in the hearts of thousands throughout the 
world as a sweet influence and power, a reflection of the face and 
character of Jesus Christ himself. The power of his life, the 
secret of its holiness and of its strength, lay in his unbroken con- 
sciousness of the presence of the living, leading Christ with him 
day by day. Of what good is our Gospel, after all, if it does not 
run like a fire in the blood of our souls? Of what good is it if 
every day we cannot abide in the living, life-molding character, 
power, and dominion of it? If Jesus Christ is alive, surely I may 
know that he is alive; if he is alive, I may know that he 
is alive to lead me, and may yield my life up, not alone 
to a sort of dim faith that he is, after all, overruling all the 
aims of our human living to his own divine ends, but a vital, 
present, abiding consciousness that he is with me, shaping every 
moment of my day, and gathering my life on to his goal for it. 
Surely I may live and make it my joy to live in the unbroken 
consciousness of his presence. 

I came through the long city tunnel on the New York Central The Presence 
Railroad a week or two ago with a lawyer of New York city, and J* God Wlth 
we fell to discussing, as the train ran into the tunnel, the pres- 
ence of God with men; and he quoted to me some lines that 
I had never heard before, by an English poet of the eighteenth 
century, that convey the thought that is in my mind in this last 
moment : 



334 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

"I gaze aloof at the tissued roof 
Where time and space are the warp and woof; 
Which the King of kings like a curtain flings 
O'er the dreadfulness of eternal things. 

"But if I could see as in truth they be 
The glories that encircle me, 
I should lightly hold this tissued fold, 
With its marvelous curtain of blue and gold; 

"For soon the whole, like a parched scroll, 
Shall before my amazed eyes uproll ; 
And, without a screen, at one burst be seen 
The Presence in which I have always been." 

Into that Presence this last hour let us quietly creep, to feel 
afresh before we go the living nearness of our ever-present Lord, 
and begin anew to realize in our experience what was the core 
The and the secret of. the experience of Paul. The words are familiar, 

Experience of ^ ut rare, alas ! is the honest realization of them in daily living : "I 
am crucified with Christ : nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ 
liveth in me : and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by 
the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for 
me." In that experience as a reality let us, my friends, anew, 
love him and his, and give ourselves up to his leadership, follow- 
ing in his footsteps, forever ! 



THE CLOSING ADDRESS 

Bishop James M. Thoburn 

I greatly enjoyed the address to which you have just been 
listening. All day long my thoughts have turned in the same 
channel. I knew I should have to speak to you for five or eight 
minutes this evening, and when I asked in my heart what should 
be my words the one thought that always presented itself was that 
Jesus Christ, our living Leader, had brought us together and 
would assume the leadership of this present movement. 
A New Era I believe every word to which you have been listening. I have 

known these things familiarly for many years ; and I would to 
God that the great truth might not only be written anew upon 
our hearts, but that we might realize it in our inmost souls as a 



CLOSING ADDRESS 335 

personal experience. It seems to me that we have reached a new 
era in the history of our Church. I believe that is a very common 
conviction among all our people who have assembled here. I see 
realized to-night one thing which I have been thinking of and 
praying for, longing for, for more than thirty years, something 
which should touch the hearts of hundreds of thousands of our 
people, and lay upon them a sense of personal responsibility in 
respect to this great work of going forth to bring the nations to 
Christ. In order to accomplish this we must be able to realize in 
our hearts that Christ is with us, that we know in whom we have 
believed. Through these many years that I have been in strange 
lands I never could have attempted certain tasks if it had not been 
that I believed and knew that Jesus Christ was by my side. 
There are many things which I doubt, in which I find myself 
perplexed; but for many years there has never been any doubt 
whatever concerning this fact. Time and again the risen Son of 
God has spoken to me in terms which could not be misunderstood. 
And while I may be mistaken in a letter or a book which I read, 
or in my own thought, there is such a thing as certainty that 
comes to the inmost soul concerning which there is no room for 
doubt. 

Now, this is what the Church needs to-day in connection with Preaching 
the great missionary movement. We do not go abroad to teach * e ns 
a new religion, but to introduce a Teacher of the new religion, 
for, as you have heard to-night, the two are inseparable. We 
go not to preach our Bible or our Church ; not our religious ideas 
or our interminable theologies, but we go to preach the Christ. 
And, if so, we should do it practically. If I speak to a man who 
is suffering from illness, and say I know a physician of great 
skill and wonderful success, who is within call and will come to 
him, I must be prepared to bring that physician to him if he asks 
for him. We should assume that when we proclaim Christ to a 
blinded, darkened, perishing nation we know the One we are 
talking about, and that when we proclaim him as a present 
Saviour we can bring him to the person, and bring the person to 
him. You may say, How can we do both ? It is perfectly simple, 
because, we know both. If we do know Jesus Christ the same 
Spirit that reveals him to us is working in the heart of the other, 
and by the Holy Spirit the living Christ will be revealed to him. 

And then, in all the great movements in which we are engaged, 



336 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Personal 

Experience 

Needed 



The Touch 
of the 
Master 



we need all the time to have this blessed assurance, and such a 
manifestation of his presence with us that we shall be prepared 
to take up the tasks he assigns. We hear constantly of theories; 
what we want now is knowledge, personal experience. Some one 
says : "Do you believe, can it ever have been true, that this person 
called Jesus of Nazareth once walked across the stormy waves? 
The thing is inconceivable." My reply is that I know what it is 
to find myself sinking in stormy waves, with a leaden sky over- 
head, raging winds around, great waves ready to overwhelm. 
And there have been times when, perhaps in the first gloaming of 
the morning, I have seen the form of One coming across the 
waves. We always recognize the form that is revealed to us by 
the Spirit of God ; and when I look to him and do not make the 
mistake of Peter, I discover that my feet are standing upon a 
foundation that is as firm as the mountain rock, and, while the 
waves have sunken down into silence again, I find that the Son 
of God has grasped my helpless hand and bids me walk anew by 
his side. 

In a very few weeks your noon will be my midnight. You will 
gather in your places of worship from day to day and lift your 
hearts to God in that hallowed Name. But Jesus will be as near 
to me over on the other side of the globe as he will be to you here, 
and he will be the very same Jesus. It is he who has inspired us 
to engage in this movement; it is he who has guided these 
brethren in making their plans ; it is he who has put it into the 
hearts of people to give of their substance for carrying on this 
work — he who is touching the hearts of men and women in this 
meeting and moving them to go far hence to the Gentiles of our 
modern world. It is he who has taken up the work of making 
this world a Christian world, and he shall never fail or be dis- 
couraged until he shall have set judgment in the earth. We have 
set our face to the front, and we shall never look back. The 
days will hasten on, and they will soon be moving with a speed 
we must now fail to note, when there will be steady, rapid, uni- 
versal progress of the kingdom of God among the nations, until 
the last grand hour shall come, when men and angels shall join 
in the great doxology that the kingdoms of this world have 
become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, that- he may 
reign forever and forever. 

I do not wish to mar the good feeling of the moment, but 



CLOSING ADDRESS 337 

before I take my seat I want to urge you, brethren and sisters, Furthering a 
to carry on this good work which has just been commenced. God ^ orl ^ only 
put it into the heart of one of your Cleveland citizens to-day to 
join me in a little walk not very far from this spot ; and he said 
to me, "I want to become responsible for the support of fifty 
pastor-teachers in your field in India. I want to support them 
for five years." That is seven thousand five hundred dollars. He 
told me not to tell his name, and I remarked to him that in the 
city of Cleveland I didn't think it was necessary to tell his name. 
Since I took my seat upon the platform I have heard it said that 
New York was a disappointment in this movement. You don't 
know New York yet. A citizen of that city came to me a few 
minutes ago and said, "I want to give five hundred dollars a year 
for five years," and I replied, "We can accommodate you." That 
amounts to how much? Two thousand five hundred dollars. 
And you add these two gifts together and you have ten thousand 
dollars to-day, and two thousand five hundred more reported 
here. Mark my words — somebody has said that I sometimes 
speak in a prophetic tone — if you carry this movement forward 
this is going to be the inauguration of the greatest revival, not of 
what the Methodists used to call "religion," but of Christ's salva- 
tion, that the United States of America has ever seen. God 
bless you ! 
22 



THE SECTION CONFERENCES 



An Inspiring 
Record 



Equipment 
for Service 



THE WOMAN'S FOREIGN MISSIONARY 
SOCIETY— ITS EQUIPMENT AND OUTLOOK 

Mrs. J. T. Gracey 

The Woman's Foreign Missionary Society is just closing the 
thirty-third year of its existence. Its record is inspiring. Its 
history is to be the heritage of the Church. Its lines have gone 
out unto the ends of the earth. To multitudes of human hearts 
it has been the agency of making known the life and love of 
Jesus Christ. His love, the only motive power strong enough to 
thrust forth to a life-service, was the prevailing power that in- 
fluenced the women of Methodism to unite for this sublimest and 
divinest errand. To all who have carefully looked into the work- 
ings it is an astonishment that such results have been reached in 
so few years. The principle of life, God's life and power, has 
been in it, which is the great secret of success. No faith was 
strong enough to grasp the results which we are permitted to 
see to-day. 

The society has a magnificent equipment for the service, both 
at home and abroad. First, it is loyal to God and to the Church. 
Secondly, it has a complete and efficient organization, a thorough 
financial system, excellent business methods, a trained and de- 
voted constituency, and high character in its officers and leaders, 
its literary and educational system, its family of periodicals, and 
its systematic course of study of mission fields. Abroad it has an 
equipment in the life, character, and influence of its missionaries, 
assistant missionaries, and teachers; in the development and 
power of its medical work for women ; in the ability and popu- 
larity of its physicians, American and native; in its finely 
equipped hospitals and dispensaries; in its schools of all grades 
from kindergarten to college ; in its orphanages, homes, and build- 
ings; in its thousand pupils under instruction, its thousand and 
more Bible readers, its general benevolent work, and the hearty, 



woman's foreign missionary society 339 

helpful sympathy of governments under which our missionaries 
perform their work. 

In organization at home the society follows both geographical Plan of 
and Church lines. It is composed of eleven coordinate branches, r & anizatlon 
entirely independent of each other, and yet parts of a great whole. 
Each of these branches has a corresponding secretary who has 
the general supervision of all the work in her branch. Each 
Annual Conference has a secretary. Each presiding elder's dis- 
trict is organized, hence there is an immediate and direct connec- 
tion between the auxiliaries, which report to the district; the 
district, which reports to the Conference ; the Conference, which 
reports to the Branch; and the Branch, which reports to the 
General Executive Committee. Close, intimate, and vital is this 
connection between the several parts. The management and 
general administration of the affairs are vested in a General 
Executive Committee, which committee is composed of the 
Branch corresponding secretary and two delegates from each 
Branch elected at the Branch annual meeting. This committee is 
the supreme authority to which all matters are referred from the 
Branches. This committee investigates the financial conditions, 
appropriates all moneys raised, devises methods for carrying for- 
ward the work, determines the amount of money to be raised, 
employs missionaries, designates their fields of labor, carefully 
scrutinizes all details on the various fields, and has supervision 
of all the publishing interests. 

It has been thought by some that this system of Branches, Pervasive and 
covering so much territory, and superintended by so many secre- {}nity iminS 
taries, must be somewhat confusing, and lead to independence of 
action, but through the entire history of the years, with all the 
diversity of opinion, there has been unity of thought and purpose, 
unity of spirit and action, and unity of administration. 

The society has an equipment in its general financial system. 
Its annual membership fees give it a reliable income, which is 
enhanced by bequests, life memberships, special donations, annual 
thank offerings, contents of mite boxes, etc. But another recog- 
nized factor is the condition of membership, which is "two cents 
a week and a prayer," the prayer to be at least as frequent as the 
contribution. 

In the first decade the society raised $574,706; the second Record of 
decade the amount increased to $1,598,424; the third to $2,916,- 



340 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

378. The income for each of the first two years of the fourth 
decade has exceeded $400,000. Since the organization of the 
society $5,881,000 has come into the treasury. This has been 
collected and disbursed by unsalaried officers, and every dollar 
raised for missionary purposes is so appropriated. 

When the Church decided to raise a thank offering of $20,000,- 
000, the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society entered with en- 
thusiasm into the project, and decided to raise $200,000 which 
should be devoted to purchase of lands, buildings, and endow- 
ments. Not only was the $200,000 raised and paid into the 
treasury, but $26,000 above and beyond the amount pledged. 
Adding the gift to Folts Missionary Training Institute, located 
at Herkimer, New York, valued at $175,000, the grand total of 
thank offering makes $401,000. 

The real estate in the various countries, consisting of houses 
for missionaries, boarding schools, colleges, hospitals, dispen- 
saries, orphanages, etc., amounts to nearly a million dollars. 
Literature of From its inception the society has made rich provision for fresh, 
inspiring missionary literature, conscious that an informed society 
will be a transformed society, and that missionary zeal and en- 
thusiasm must be based on an intelligent comprehension of the 
world's need. It has a family of papers for old and young, for its 
English and German constituency. 

The Woman's Missionary Friend, grown from four to forty 
pages, so full of information, so rich in its presentation of every 
phase of mission work, has now 23,582 subscribers. Some mis- 
sionary magazines live only for a short time, but the Woman's 
Foreign Missionary Society has never had a death in its literary 
family. This magazine has a record. It has been so wisely 
managed that it has not only paid all its own expenses, but has 
contributed a fund toward supplying other literature. In the 
thirty-two years it has paid over from its earnings $34,257 to 
meet the expenses of printing other literature, or over $1,700 a 
year. 

The German Friend is the only distinctively missionary paper 
in German in the Methodist Church in this country, and the only 
German paper edited by a woman. Of its 4,199 subscribers, a 
part are in Germany and Switzerland and a part in the United 
States. The editor, I regret to say, has died since this Convention 
has been in progress. 



WOMAN'S FOREIGN MISSIONARY SOCIETY 34I 

For thirteen years an illustrated monthly missionary paper for 
children has been issued, the only foreign missionary paper for 
children in the Methodist Church. This has a circulation of 
27,128 copies, and is very popular with the little folks. 

As early as 1879 a system of mission studies and uniform Mission 
readings was arranged for, and through all the following years ^ tu .^ ies and 
this system has been kept up in the auxiliary societies. As an aid Readings 
to this a monthly leaflet of four pages called The Study is pub- 
lished, which now has 34,122 subscribers. Thus it will be seen 
that this society issues every month 89,031 missionary periodicals, 
or 1,057,712 copies annually, or over 67,000,000 pages of period- 
ical literature. This is quite distinct from the miscellaneous 
literature, such as leaflets, biographical sketches, booklets, annual 
reports, maps, calendars, etc., of which millions of pages are sent 
out annually. These figures may or may not convey to our minds 
a clear idea of what the society is doing, but in the presence of 
these facts is not the society to be considered a prominent factor in 
furnishing missionary information to the Church? 

But these efforts to provide literature are not confined to our Literature in 
own country. Realizing the great need that exists in India for a Laneuages 
Christian literature for women, the society early in its history 
arranged to issue a Christian illustrated paper for women who 
had come out from heathenism and were receiving Christian in- 
struction. For this purpose an endowment of $25,000 was raised. 
This is called The Woman's Friend, and five editions in different 
dialects are now issued, reaching thousands of women in their 
seclusion, giving them a touch of life from the outside world. 

There has been established in Japan also a monthly illustrated 
magazine for Christian women called The Tokiwa. It is almost 
impossible to meet the constantly growing demand in Japan for 
all forms of Christian literature. One of the society's missionaries 
has been appointed to edit this magazine, and to edit other litera- 
ture especially adapted to women and girls. This is the only 
instance, we believe, of any missionary society appointing a 
woman to exclusively literary work. 

For some time a plan was contemplated in which to unite all United study 
Women's Boards of Missions in the United States and Canada in ° 1SS1011S 
a more thorough study of missions. This took definite form at 
the Ecumenical Missionary Conference in New York. The matter 
was very thoroughly discussed, and a committee was appointed 



342 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

with discretionary power to plan such a course, which should ex- 
tend over several years. This committee represented five leading 
denominations, namely, the Congregational, Methodist Episcopal, 
Baptist, Presbyterian, and Protestant Episcopal. 

"Via Christi" The first course in the regular series was introductory and 
historical, concerning the progress of missions from apostolic time 
to the close of the eighteenth century, entitled "An Introduction 
to the Study of Missions." A text-book, Via Christi, the first 
of the series, to aid in the development and elucidation of the out- 
lined course was prepared by a Methodist, Louise Manning Hodg- 
kins, editor of the Woman's Missionary Friend. This course 
with its text-book accompaniment has been taken up with great 
enthusiasm by more than forty Women's Boards in the United 
States, Canada, and by some in Great Britain. This first year's 
work was taken as fundamental and preparatory to a course to 
follow on the different fields. Via Christi was issued just about 
a year ago, and thirty-five thousand copies have been sold, an 
unprecedented record for a missionary book. Ten missionary 
magazines are publishing outlines of this study, and about a 
million women are engaged in following this plan each month. 
Secular as well as religious periodicals have united in the state- 
ment that this new scheme of study, with the text-book, is the 
greatest missionary movement of the day. 

"Lux Christi" Another text-book for 1903 has just been issued called Lux 
Christi, or an outline study of India. India is presented as the 
first in the series of countries, because India was the first field of 
Anglo-Saxon Protestant missions, and by reason of the seclusion 
and oppression of the women is preeminently the field of woman's 
missionary work. This book is an outline, a condensed summary 
of conditions and missions in India. Lux Christi was prepared 
by a prominent well-known writer, Mrs. Caroline Atwater Mason, 
connected with the Baptist Church. 

The standard Young people of all ages, from the cradle roll to the mission 
band and the young woman's society, are being trained for service. 
The most recent organization is known as "The Standard Bear- 
ers," the object of which is to support its own missionaries in 
the field, and thus establish a personal relation between those who 
give and the missionaries. Though so recently organized, there 
are over ten thousand enlisted, supporting seven missionaries. 
This movement has extended to Germany. 



Bearers 



WOMAN S FOREIGN MISSIONARY SOCIETY 343 

The society's work is located in Africa (the southeast and 

west coasts), in Bulgaria, in North, South, West, and Central 

China, in India, from the border of Thibet to the extreme south, 

in all of the five Annual Conferences; Burma, Italy, Korea, 

Mexico, Malaysia, South America, Japan, and the Philippines and 

Loochoo Islands. 

The society has an equipment in its staff of two hundred and staff of 
. . . j . ,, Missionaries 

twenty-six missionaries now in active service, and in the power 

and influence of those who have been identified with it during 

these thirty-three years, numbering nearly four hundred. Four 

missionaries are self-supporting, giving not only their time, but 

their substance to the cause. Many of these women have honored 

God, the Church, and their society by their heroic devotion, by 

their loving sympathy, their saintly lives, and in every land where 

they have labored have built themselves monuments in the hearts 

of the girls they have taught, and of the women they have been 

instrumental in elevating. 

Notably has the society an equipment in its medical work. The 
ministry of healing in the Orient has entered the home, and now 
the heart, and has added new meaning and power to the message 
of salvation, and is an incontrovertible evidence of Christianity 
and the message of salvation. 

This society inaugurated woman's medical work in the East, Medical 
and through its influence the Lady Dufferin movement in India Work 
was made possible, which is now such a recognized power. Now 
every well-regulated mission has its woman's medical work and 
hospitals, etc. Twenty-two physicians of this society are now en- 
gaged in China, India, and Korea. Seventy hospitals and dis- 
pensaries are great centers, and our physicians treat annually 
about one hundred thousand patients. During the past year two 
beautiful and commodious hospitals for women have been opened, 
one in Kiukiang, Central China, the gift of Dr. Danforth, of Chi- 
cago, in memory of his wife. The occasion of its opening was a 
notable one. There were present a number of Chinese ladies of 
rank, and many leading officials and the British consul and 
American vice consul of Nanking made addresses. Two Chinese 
women, educated by this society, graduates of Ann Arbor, are the 
physicians in charge. These native physicians have treated over 
eight thousand patients in the hospitals this first year. 

In Chungking, that far-away outpost in western China, there 



Work 



344 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

has been dedicated another hospital, the William Gamble Me- 
morial. This was formally dedicated in February. Many dis- 
tinguished persons and Chinese officials were present, and an 
address was delivered by the governor of the province. This is 
the only foreign building in western China used exclusively for 
women, and is the largest and best equipped in the Yang-tse 
valley outside of the city of Shanghai. 
Educational In educational equipment the Woman's Foreign Missionary 

Society is one of the leading missionary societies of the world, 
and in its varied departments shows the transcendent value of 
work being done in genuinely Christian schools. Its schools, 
from kindergarten to college, stand for all that is elevating in 
morals, broad in intellectuality, transforming and spiritual in 
religion. Hundreds and thousands of pupils have gone from 
these schools as assistants, teachers, home-makers, pastors' wives, 
and are leavening the whole lump of heathenism. Many of the 
graduates are occupying very responsible positions, and there is 
a great demand for their services. The college in Lucknow, 
India, the first established in Asia for women, filled with the 
spirit of its founder, Isabella Thoburn, has a national and inter- 
national reputation. 

Another college, in Nagasaki, Japan, founded by Elizabeth 
Russell, is an institution of collegiate grade, and under the new 
plan of unification of educational work all other schools in 
southern Japan are to be feeders to this central institution. 

Crandon Institute in Rome is designed to meet in Italy the 
demand for the higher Christian education of girls, and so wide- 
reaching is its power that it has awakened great opposition. 
Pupils of seventeen nationalities are in attendance, and twenty 
teachers compose the faculty. The pope in his letters has sent 
out warnings to the clergy against the inroads of Protestantism 
through the teachings of this school. 

The largest boarding school is in Pachuca, Mexico, with four 
hundred pupils. Sixty-five boarding schools and numerous day 
schools are centers where twenty thousand young girls and 
women are receiving Christian training. Eighteen Bible women's 
training schools are located in Japan, China, and India, while 
summer schools are held for the training of native Christian 
women. 

No greater benevolent work is carried on than in the establish- 



.WOMAN S FOREIGN MISSIONARY SOCIETY 345 

ment of orphanages, caring for thousands of famine waifs. These Orphanages 
have been established in Mexico and Italy, Japan and Africa, two 
in China and nine in India. 

In Bareilly, India, is a Woman's Department of the theological 
school, with its annex the kindergarten. 

Our educational institutions and hospitals and dispensaries in 
North China suffered from the uprising, and our beautiful build- 
ings were destroyed, but they are now rising from their ashes 
with Chinese public sentiment more favorable with regard to the 
education of women. A portion of the indemnity has been paid 
by the Chinese government, and it is hoped that very soon all our 
schools will resume their normal conditions. 

Very considerable attention has been given to teaching indus- 
tries to poor Christian women who have no means of livelihood. 
One industrial school is located at Tokyo, Japan, many of whose 
graduates are filling positions of usefulness in government and 
other schools as teachers of industrial work. 

All other agencies center in the evangelistic work. From home Evangelistic 
to home, through city and village, the messengers go telling the 
story of redemption for women. This story has transformed the 
life, the home, the community, and has brought joy and gladness 
into lives that were hopeless. 

The outlook is bright with promise. The society recognizes 
that success is not due to any superiority of organization or 
human wisdom in methods, but to providential leadings and 
reliance upon One who is able to do and has done abundantly 
above all we can ask or think. It is earnestly hoped that this 
First General Missionary Convention of the Church will infuse 
new life and spirit into this society, so that it may have such a 
spiritual equipment that it may march forth to certain and more 
glorious victory. 



Work 



346 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



THE WORK OF THE WOMAN'S HOME 
MISSIONARY SOCIETY 

Mrs. Delia Lathrop Williams 



Western 
Civilization 



Varied 
Activities 



Strengthen- 
ing Present 
Work 



It was said this morning that Western civilization will never 
save the heathen ; that it must be the Christ who is to be lifted up. 
But the pity of it is that Western civilization does not lift up the 
Christ in these foreign lands. Would it not be a wonderful thing 
if we could make our Western civilization so pure, so sweet, so 
complete, so godlike, that Western civilization and the lifting up 
of Jesus Christ would mean the same thing; that wherever our 
American civilization went, justice should go with it, love should 
go with it, the Gospel of Jesus Christ should go with it every- 
where? This is what we would gladly make of the beautiful 
home land, if we had the power. 

The Woman's Home Missionary Society begins on the Atlantic 
coast with the immigrant as she lands upon our shores ; and 
then we try to follow the immigrant population across the country 
to the Pacific coast, with our deaconess homes and our city 
missions. We are trying to look after our Indian populations. 
We have our orphanages, our hospitals, and our medical missions ; 
and our work in the great Southland among the white people of 
the South that were discovered by the war, and among the colored 
men of the South that were discovered by the war, too. We 
have such great fields of work and such pressing need of money 
that it sometimes makes us heartsick. We have just come back 
from our annual convention at Kansas City, and if you could 
have seen the letters piled up before us — "Won't you come and 
help us?" — hungry girls in the South, wanting something better 
than they have had in their cabin homes, begging for the indus- 
trial home, so that they can learn to be wives and mothers, and 
can receive some academic instruction, so as to be able to read as 
their fathers and mothers cannot. It sends us to our knees, I 
assure you, when these peoples come to us and we are obliged to 
say, "No, not now." 

Our policy of recent years has been to strengthen the work we 
have instead of opening up new centers of work. Last year we 
completed our medical mission building in Boston, worth about 
twenty-seven thousand dollars, a three-story building, with a 



woman's home missionary society 347 

garden on top, away back at the north end of the city, near the 
old North Church, in an Italian settlement, where we are gather- 
ing together the Italians and other foreigners to give them 
medical assistance and so to reach their hearts, just as the Master 
did. It is wonderful how these poor people come to our mission- 
aries and confide in them. And then we have finished a mission 
building which is free from debt, in Detroit, the Tillman Avenue 
Mission for Poles and Bohemians, costing $5,500 — a good new 
brick building. Then there is our new and beautiful Rust Hall, 
for the training of deaconesses and missionaries, an enlargement 
of our Lucy Webb Hayes Training School in Washington, ren- 
dered imperative by its growth. 

Our membership has increased during the last year about Membership 
5,000, so that we have now 76,000 members in the society. Our 
income increased nearly $100,000 during the year. So you see 
we are growing a little. 

When the Twentieth Century Offering was announced by the 
Church the Woman's Home Missionary Society pledged itself to 
raise $200,000 of that money. We have already raised $225,000 
and more, and we have $50,000 more in sight. 

I bring you only congratulations and joy to-day in view of all The Outloox 
the work that is before us. I am sure the Lord is among those society 
who are trying to help his people. I am glad that we are conse- 
crated to this work of trying to save the world, and I am glad 
that the Woman's Home Missionary Society has a part in saving 
all these people outside of our own land. I feel somehow or 
other as if we are the basis upon which all this foreign missionary 
work must be built ; because people are not going to accept the 
Christian religion unless we live it. If we can help our own 
American citizens to live their religion, if we can exhibit a 
sample of a national life that is pure and sweet and strong, I am 
sure that the Christian religion will find favor abroad. I said at 
the Kentucky Conference a little while ago that it seems as 
though it would be easier to save two hundred Chinamen here 
than in a foreign country. An old minister came up afterward 
and said, "No, the work you are doing on the Pacific coast and in 
these cities, in trying to save the Chinese and Japanese, is harder 
than the work done on the foreign field ; because these people in 
this country see that we are not living the religion that we pro- 
fess.'' Isn't that a pity? Oughtn't it to be easier to save a few 



348 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



hundred Chinese here than those in their own land? Shouldn't 
we be ambitious, every one of us, to present such a view of our 
own Christian religion to the people that come to us from abroad 
that they shall fall in love with Jesus Christ as they look into 
our faces? 



Industrial 
Homes 



Response to 
Urgent Calls 



THE VALUE OF INDUSTRIAL TRAINING 
IN OUR SOUTHERN SCHOOLS 

Mrs. Wilbur P. Thirkield 

"Civilization is a good woman." This is the basal idea of 
the Woman's Home Missionary Society. Because of this we 
went into the Southland and brought redemption to its women. 
Hear the prophetic words of Bishop Haygood : "Dig wells in the 
desert and in the rocky places. Plant these industrial homes all 
over the South. Send out one well-trained woman from such a 
home; she will be worth a regiment of lady missionaries and 
their visitations. She will live among the people who need her; 
she will be a specimen and an inspiration to them ; she will in- 
carnate what you seek to teach." 

A like utterance came also from his "brother in black," the 
sainted and saintly Dr. Crummell : "I plead for the establishment 
of one large industrial school in every Southern State for the 
black girls of the South. I want them to serve the home life of 
the rising womanhood of my race." Our Methodist women 
have answered these calls, and to-day there are eighteen such 
homes from the mountain to the sea. Were they needed? 
Emancipation Day may have thrown open the door of the cabin 
and brought freedom to the body, but it failed to set free the mind 
and heart. There could be no sudden change from rudeness into 
beauty, from ignorance into knowledge. Such homes could not 
be centers of purity, as they were utterly lacking in family history 
or high ideals. In our industrial homes we have reached through 
the daughters this "debased motherhood," and have given them 
what is far more effective than sermons — the loving hand of 
sympathy, the tender warmth of "mothering." Our matrons are 
true lovers of humanity, daring to look the national problem 
squarely in the face and to train our girls to go out into active 
service. Our girls are living missionaries. 



INDUSTRIAL TRAINING IN SOUTHERN SCHOOLS 349 

" The dear Lord's best interpreters 

Are humble human souls : 
The Gospel of a life like hers 

Is more than books and scrolls." 

Within those walls they learn the dignity of labor ; they discover The Dignity 
that brains and skill are needed in the commonest acts of life ; ° a or 
they realize that the simplest vegetables may be made savory, the 
plainest utensils the most useful. Silver or tin may hold the same 
food, but the care and thought in its preparation make it palatable. 
As they pass from room to room, from one line of work to an- 
other, that secret so often hidden becomes revealed — the vast 
difference between housekeeping and home-making. One is a 
business, the other an art. They are taught to combine the two, 
and while cleaning up the cabin, and making it and all within 
most healthful, they also add the little touches of comfort and 
beauty which shall reach the soul and transform the hut into a 
home. Thus is their character, as head, hand, and heart are alike 
renewed, made all rounded and complete. 

These girls do not go forth raised above their people, but they The Test of 
are eager to go back into the mountain fastnesses or the marshy Real Llfe 
lowlands with a fresh zest for their work, a higher sense of its 
dignity and power, and a deeper reverence for the toilworn hands 
of the ignorant but faithful mother. I had the privilege of living 
for seventeen years near our industrial home at Atlanta, and it 
did me good to see those girls go out into life, and how they 
stood the test. Many of them bought homes. Over half of them 
married ministers and went forth as the home-makers and future 
mothers of the race. Scores were busy in the schoolroom. Sev- 
eral were called to positions of trust at Tuskegee, that center of 
industrialism in the South. One is a deaconess in Atlanta, 
another a trained nurse. These are simply the fruits of one 
Home, as it came under my personal observation ; but they typify 
the fruits of all the homes scattered all over the Southland. Hear 
a daughter speak, as she leaves cheer and culture behind and re- 
turns to the lonely, desolate cabin : "The love for nw race is a 
passion with me as deep as the sea, as holy as the Church of God." 

The hovel of the poor white man is no better than that of his where Homes 
black neighbor. Oftentimes its interior is not so neat. There are Hovels 
no vines about the doorway, no curtains at the windows, no 
flowers in the garden. Many of them are windowless and shut- 



35o 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Foundation 
Work 



Women as 

Farm 

Laborers 



Future 
Mothers 



terless, the walls lined with snuffboxes. The utter squalor of 
such a home is more depressing than even that of the city slums. 
Our industrial homes are sending out girls to turn this wretched- 
ness into a beauty spot. One of the graduates from Ritter Home, 
is now care-taker and looker-after of all the girls of the home in 
Boaz, in the hills of Alabama. Like homes are to be opened on 
the hilltops of North Carolina, for the ministers are eager to put 
their hands into their pockets and share the expense. 

This work has been foundational, radical, touching the very 
roots of life. But, grand as have been the achievements of the 
last twenty years, the past is only the preparation, looking for- 
ward to yet greater results. Poise, patience, love — these are the 
sure touchstones to success. Our Woman's Home Missionary 
Society is trying to meet and overcome the taints of heredity by 
the saving power of a new environment. However great the ob- 
stacles, His grace is sufficient, and in our industrial training we 
are putting Christianity alongside of handcraft and book learning. 
Cleverness and brilliancy may be unfruitful, if there is no moral 
force behind them. We are sending out girls, their wills joined 
unto the divine will, who are going forth to conquer circum- 
stances and to turn sadness and depression into joy and gladness. 

In a recent number of The Independent a Southern woman 
writes about the negro girl; she says, "I never sat in a negro 
cabin." Thank God, I have had the privilege of sitting in many 
such, watching all night by the bedside of the suffering, coming 
in close personal touch with their lives, listening to the heart cries 
of those yearning, anxious mothers. Would that I might bring 
to you to-day that plea, so pathetic and yet so hopeful, from their 
throbbing, agonizing souls! Four hundred thousand negro 
women even now are classed as farm laborers. In one county of 
Alabama twenty-five persons are crowded into every ten rooms 
of house accommodation, while in the worst tenement districts 
of New York there are not above twenty-two. The mountaineers 
in Kentucky and Tennessee are given up to family feuds, without 
God, without the Bible. Shall we leave them yet? 

Who are these girls who have come under the influence of our 
industrial training? They are the future mothers of the race. 
Each one of their households will be a miniature commonwealth ; 
and every such woman of character will be worth twenty reform- 
ers. The regeneration of the Southern child must be brought 



INDUSTRIAL TRAINING IN SOUTHERN SCHOOLS 35 1 

about by the regeneration of the Southern mother. She is the 
defender of the home. She makes and molds the character of the 
future. She is making history for the next century. To her is 
given the crown and glory of womanhood — the training of an 
immortal soul. Woe be to that nation whose mothers do not bear 
men. True are those forceful words : "The destiny of nations 
lies far more in the hands of women, the mothers, than in the 
possession of power." 

Look at the new mother as she goes forth from our homes. Transformed 
Visit the place where she reigns as queen. Equal with her hus- Womanhood 
band in intellect, congenial in taste, thorough in housework, full 
of sympathy for the needy ones about her ; her heart aglow with 
a mother's love, she turns simplicity into beauty, disorder into 
order, the drudgery of work into a joy, the cares of childhood 
into a divine and holy mission. No wonder her boy's eyes sparkle, 
her two rooms attract and allure, her very living speaks louder 
than any words from pulpit or platform. "It is man," says Drum- 
mond, "who is the missionary, it is not his words. His character 
is his message." 

Such centers of life-giving power are scattered all over the centers of 
South, a vivid contrast and redeeming force to the homeless, ^-giving 

•r • , , P0Wer 

ignorant waifs crowding our city streets and country lanes — two 
thousand negro orphans in Nashville alone; hundreds of black 
and white in the low wards of every city ; children without hope, 
without knowledge of aught but crime — they are made criminals 
by the very air they inhale — their faces stained with the dirt of 
the streets, their souls soon to be stained with the blackness of 
sin and crime. Is not your heart touched as was the soul of that 
great poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, when she wrote, "The 
child's sob in the silence curses deeper than the strong man in 
his wrath" ? These boys and girls are soon to have a part in the 
molding of our nation. These children of the saloon and gutter 
must be offset by the children of pure, refined homes. These coun- 
ties must be Americanized, not Africanized. Through the new 
home we are sending out the coming leaders, strong and valiant 
for the right, thoughtful and ready to stand for America and 
Africa. True, knowledge is power; so, too, ignorance is power. 
Do you realize its vast extent throughout the South ? Nearly one 
third of the voters of Georgia are illiterate, and there is a larger 
number in other Southern States. There is only about one half the 



352 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A Common 
Destiny 



Education 
and Crime 



Time 

Required for 
Building 
Character 



money spent for education on all Georgia as is spent on the single 
city of Boston. Out of ten Southern States only three fall below 
the fifty per cent level of illiteracy among the colored race, and 
many States reach the twenty per cent line among the white race. 

Black and white must be lifted together. The physical, moral, 
mental, and spiritual being of one race is always closely allied 
with that of the other. Two million illiterate mothers means 
four million illiterate children in the next generation. Out in the 
country, among the masses, they are still living in a condition of 
ignorance and bondage. In Mississippi the witch hunt is a reality ; 
in Tennessee the mountaineers are ignorant and superstitious ; in 
Georgia and the Carolinas child labor, and its dwarfing, killing 
effects, is arousing the nation. Our industrial homes are training 
girls who will go out to help solve this problem. They are plant- 
ing the schoolhouse from the Potomac to the Gulf. Over each 
floats the Stars and Stripes, and within stands the Christian sol- 
dier, more efficient in the hour of national danger than he who 
handles the gun. She arouses the dormant minds to thinking 
and to wishing ; she puts ideas into the youthful brain and sends 
him out to transform his acre into produce ; she takes the muscle 
and reveals its power until they go forth ready to fashion ma- 
chinery, build the cottage, make the clothes, cook the meal, till 
the soil — the sure avenue to triumph and success. Truly does 
one say, "Soils, minerals, timber, climate, do not make wealth; 
else New England would be in the poorhouse, and the South 
rolling in riches." Wealth comes alone from skill and brains. 
We are teaching them practical lessons along such lines as we 
reveal to the daughters of the land the evil consequences of waste- 
ful housekeeping, bad cooking, unskilled labor, ignorance, super- 
stition, shiftlessness, vulgarity, and vice. 

Does it pay ? A hundredfold ! Southern writers may tell of 
unchastity and dishonesty among the negro women. Our girls 
do not go astray. The educated negro is not the criminal. I 
could give scores of instances where girls who have come under 
the influence of our training have gone into the darkest corners, 
have been plunged into a very whirlpool of temptation, and have 
come out pure and true. 

Do not criticise, but sympathize. Do not worry at slow growth. 
We are building men and women. Steady, long-continued work 
is necessary for the elevation of any race. Have faith in their 



INDUSTRIAL TRAINING IN SOUTHERN SCHOOLS 



353 



possibilities, and judge them by their individual strength, rather 
than by the weakness of the many. The whole situation, indus- 
trially and educationally, is full of hope. The South itself is 
aroused; our Methodist sisters in the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South, are starting like homes, while leading educators 
are awakening to the need. 

These young people are now looking in at the great wide-open 
door of American life, getting their first taste of the schoolroom, 
and are hungering and thirsting for more. What can we do to 
aid in their evolution ? They stand at the crossroads ; let us teach 
them to read the signs. Power is the index of responsibility, and 
brotherhood is the dynamic of civilization. Speer says truly, 
"There is no right sociology which is not religious ; and there is 
no right religion which is not sociological." We have the duty 
and the opportunity. Through these homes God opens the chan- 
nel for us to cleanse and purify the heathen within our borders. 
Victor Hugo says, "Thou wilt be my soul, and mine arm." These 
graduates will extend our influence into every hamlet and town. 
As artisans in home and school, each one is a living missionary. 
Already they are going across the sea and becoming missionaries 
in distant lands. God is not dead. His children may be timid and 
asleep, but he never sleeps. He glances forward to a future we 
may never see, but which we may help make real. "Duties are 
ours ; events are God's." 



A Hunger 
and Thirst for 
the Best 
Things 



" The centuries are God's days ; within his hand, 

Held in the hollow, as a balance swings, 

Less than its dust, are all our temporal things. 

We have no glass to sweep his universe. 

A hand's-breadth distant dies, to our poor ears, 

The strain whose echoes keep all heaven glad. 

We do but grope and creep — 

There always is a polestar in the sky." 



23 



354 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Summoning 
Voices 



The Far 
Northwest 



ALASKA, HAWAII, AND PORTO RICO 

Mrs. May Leonard Woodruff 

When the nineteenth century was seventeen years old a man 
was alone in the fields communing with his God, when suddenly 
there seemed to break upon his ear voices calling him in a north- 
western direction. Following these voices, he found a tribe of 
Indians who needed a God. Such was the germ of the great 
Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. From 
that day until the present voices have been heard, not only from 
all around the world, but they have been coming to us from all 
parts of our own land. 

In 1869 voices were heard from far beyond the sea, and the ear 
of womanhood of the Methodist Episcopal Church was unstopped, 
and the call was responded to, and our Woman's Foreign Mis- 
sionary Society went into the foreign lands, following the lead of 
these voices. It was years later before the ears of Methodism 
were unstopped to the voices in our own land. For a time we 
listened to the voices that came from south of the lakes, from 
north of the Gulf, from east of the Pacific, and from west of the 
Atlantic, and now we have gone, because of those voices, into all 
parts of this wondrous work. 

But erelong there broke upon our ears other voices. They 
came from away up in the northwest, and we wondered, and we 
heard the voice of the Alaskan woman; we heard the voice of 
the infant that had just come into this world with a wail. We 
saw the mother who looked at her babe and said, "I would rather 
take her life than that she should live as I have lived." And there 
where infanticide has been practiced for these many years we 
heard the voice of the child. And then we heard the voice of the 
girl, and she said to us, "Here I am, worth nothing; here I am, 
looked upon as less than a beast ; here I am, unloved ; here I am, 
uncared for." We listened to her voice and we heard it, and we 
have been giving to the Alaskan girl the same advantages that 
we have given to our girls in the South and in the West. And 
O, what a sad wail it was that went up from the widow at the 
funeral pile, upon which her husband's body was about to be 
burned, when she knew that thereafter she would no more have 
friends, but would be cast out. Hearing these voices, we must 



ALASKA, HAWAII, AND PORTO RICO 355 

give to these babes, these girls, and these women, the Gospel of 
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And there in our great Jessie 
Lee Home in Unalaska, we are giving to these just what we ought 
to have given them many years ago. And the voice is louder 
than ever, when we realize that the Greek Church is spending 
more money in Alaska than all the Protestant organizations put 
together. We must respond more and more emphatically. 

There came another call to us, from the southwest of our own Japanese in 
country. We turned our ear in that direction, and heard the wail Hawau 
of the Hawaiian woman in her home. Would you know why we 
knew these things? Because we had learned the voice of the 
Japanese woman in her home in Japan. We turn to these Japanese 
women, more than ten thousand of them in Honolulu alone. 
There they were worshiping their idols as they did in Japan. We 
have gone to them with the same blessed Christ that we have 
taken to the Alaskan and to the Hawaiian woman. To the 
Japanese woman there we are giving the same freedom and 
liberty that we have in our Master. 

Only a few days ago upon the platform of that great conven- Saved to a 
tion in Kansas City, Missouri, we looked upon the fruits of our Christian 
labor when a little Hawaiian girl stood upon the platform and 
sang to us the beautiful songs of Zion. Born in Honolulu of 
Japanese parents, she was put into the care of an Italian woman, 
who, rinding her as she grew up to be graceful and sweet and 
that she had a wonderful voice, gave her training in voice culture 
and taught her the lewd dance, that she might entertain in the 
dance halls of Chinatown in San Francisco. Five years later she 
was taken back to Japan, because her father was going across 
the sea to bring Japanese girls to this country for immoral pur- 
poses. The little girl returned to San Francisco, was discovered 
by our missionaries, and rescued from one knows not what kind 
of a life. At ten years of age she had given her heart to the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and as I talked to her one day she said, "O, I want 
to be a missionary, just like Miss Gray." Shall we not give to 
the Japanese women this same Gospel ? 

Less than three years ago we heard voices from the southeast. Porto Kican 
We turned our ear in that direction and we heard tongues that 
were somewhat strange. They were our sisters in Porto Rico. 
What is the position of woman in that land? God alone knows 
the depth of her degradation, her ignorance, and her superstition, 



Women 



356 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Four Hundred 
Years of 
Darkness 



The Answer 
Made 



her lack of knowledge of God as her Saviour. On the 18th of 
October, 1898, when our blessed flag was raised over that island, 
the banner of Emmanuel was placed there, and the Woman's 
Home Missionary Society went to that island, and we have given 
the Gospel to these women. We have heard the voices of the 
blind children of the island. Hundreds of them, because of a 
terrible practice at the time of their birth, are blind, blind, blind. 
And as you go through the island, up and down, there are the 
blind people, blind because of ignorance and superstition. 

We have listened to the voice of the woman in Porto Rico who 
to-day is a noble wife, and she is seeking for a true and a pure 
religion. For four hundred years these people have known 
nothing but ignorance and superstition. These women have 
called to us. A second class have called to us, those who to-day 
are mothers in that island, whose children do not know the name 
and face of their own father. And there is another class of 
women whom I saw in the miserable patios and shacks of the 
island. We went into one of them one day and saw a Porto Rican 
woman sitting there rocking monotonously back and forth. She 
did not notice us until the deaconess with whom I was touched 
her shoulder, and then she looked up and said, "Will he ever come 
back again?" And the deaconess replied, "No, Mary, I think 
he will never come back." She was one of the women who had 
been espoused by a Spanish soldier. When he was deported 
from the island he had not cared enough for the woman 
who had borne children for him to bid her good-bye in her 
own home. There she sits, rocking to and fro in her misery, 
believing that the man who is the father of her children 
is incarcerated in one of the prisons of the island. We have 
heard these voices; we have gone to these people. In our indus- 
trial home in San Juan we have a little girl whose only home, so 
far as she ever had known, was in an old cave under the city wall. 
Another was picked up in one of those miserable patios and was 
brought to us looking more like an animal than a human being. 
We are hearing these voices to-day; we are turning our ear in 
every direction, and the Woman's Home Missionary Society 
promises you that just wherever our flag goes, there we will turn 
our ears and follow it, and uplift the Gospel, the banner of our 
Emmanuel, that women and children may be rescued from their 
darkness, their ignorance, and their superstition. 



THE DEACONESS AS A MISSIONARY WORKER 357 



THE DEACONESS AS A MISSIONARY 
WORKER 

The Rev. W. F. Oldham, D.D. 

Wherein consists the strength of the Roman Catholic Nuns and 
Church? Not in the closely related ecclesiasticism, though that eacouesses 
does some things well. The real strength of Romanism consists 
of these pale-faced women whom we see sometimes on the street, 
who serve the Church. The corresponding strength of the Prot- 
estant Church is in the Protestant nun, the deaconess. Some one 
has said, Is that not imitating Roman Catholicism? I care not 
who makes the pattern, provided the pattern be good. There is 
this difference : The Roman Catholic nun signs away her liberty 
absolutely. The Protestant deaconess is a free woman, who gives 
herself to service, consenting from day to day. The Roman 
Catholic nun once for all resigns herself to a certain life. The 
deaconesses are continually setting up homes from which strong 
missionary influences are going out. 

In our whole deaconess work where is the great stress and diffi- The Problem 
culty in the home land ? You have heard about the South and the 
negro's cabin, and about Alaska and Porto Rico. Not to minify 
this, but to put the accent where peculiarly it belongs, I declare 
to you that the most profound problem that faces this American 
people is the problem of the great cities of our United States. 
You know how Lord Beaconsfield long ago said, pointing across 
the Atlantic Ocean, "They," meaning the Americans, "cannot 
govern their own municipalities. Do they expect to teach us how 
to govern ours ?" He put his finger on the spot of all spots where 
we are most seriously threatened. God save these United States ! 
He cannot save them unless the cities be purified. What are we 
going to do in the cities? The cities can never be saved until a 
practical Christianity, that is not primarily concerned with 
doctrine and dogmas, but is primarily concerned with the 
expression of a Christlike life, shall fill our streets and our alleys 
and make way for the coming of the kingdom of God. And as 
the leaders of that movement these deaconesses have come, not to 
take the place of other Christian women, but to lead the Christian 
women. God forbid that the deaconess should ever be the sole 
and only worker in the streets and alleys of the town; but God 



of the Cities 



358 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Roman 

Catholic 

Hospitals 



Schools and 
Orphanages 



The 

Deaconess as 
Visitor 



make her the leader of the Christian womanhood of the Church 
in going into that home, whether it be on the avenue or in the 
alley, into which the tidings of God have not yet come. 

In every considerable city in this United States you will find 
the Roman Catholic hospital, and, on the whole, it is not costing 
the Roman Catholic people any money at all. The Roman 
Catholic hospitals somehow or other are managed in all cities 
without a continual and great draft upon a little handful of 
people. In some way the Roman Catholics have learned how to 
run great hospitals practically at a profit. What is the secret of 
it ? The Romish nun, serving for God's sake, and not. for hire. 
God bless all the activities of kindly women in whatever Church 
they may be found. But I submit that before this Methodist 
Church can serve the communities all around them we must learn 
how to handle our great hospitals, manning them — "womaning" 
them — manning them with the deaconess, the trained efficient 
worker who is economical and does not demand anything near 
what is necessary to be paid to a trained nurse who is serving in 
part at least for wages. 

The Roman Catholics have schools and orphanages. There 
was a time when, owing to peculiar circumstances, two little boys, 
the sons of a German, were thrown upon the Protestant Church. 
The Protestant Church had no place in that part of the world to 
put those little boys. Two Romish sisters said, "Give us the boys 
and we will take care of them." The Roman Church took the two 
boys. Who were they? One of them was afterward Bishop 
Rosecrans, of West Virginia, and the other General Rosecrans, 
of the Union army — presented by Protestant people to the Roman 
Church, simply because we did not have the orphanages to put 
them into. How are we ever going to have orphanages? We 
cannot run them without experienced and skillful women who 
are serving for love and not for hire. 

The deaconess is the visitor. The patronage of a mission, the 
condescension of a well-to-do woman stooping to say, "You are 
poor people, and we rather think we will come and help you" — 
all that is perfectly abominated by those we would help. You 
cannot have a person live in this country six months and enjoy 
patronage. In America the woman who gives must be not only 
my lady bountiful, but my lady gentle and gracious, a woman 
with the tides of the great God in her heart, giving to her sisters. 



PRESIDING ELDERS AND DISTRICT SECRETARIES 359 

The deaconesses are going from home to home, toiling up the 
steps, going into little humble homes, not taking the airs of 
patronage, but always taking the spirit of sisterliness. God bless 
the deaconess. She is making possible the new order of a society 
which shall be interpenetrated by Christian kindliness, where 
those who can are taking the loving message to those who need. 



WHAT THE PRESIDING ELDER AND THE 
DISTRICT MISSIONARY SECRETARY 

CAN DO 

SECTION CONFERENCE DISCUSSION 

The Rev. C. W. Millard, D.D., New York District, New Exchange of 
York Conference : We plan to have district missionary rallies u pi s 
each year, and in addition we are carrying out at this time a plan 
for the exchange of pulpits and prayer meetings all over the dis- 
trict. Each minister is to prepare a sermon and prayer meeting 
address, and he is to give it as many times in his own church as 
he thinks best ; he is to preach in some other church than his own 
on missions, and he is to be at some other prayer meeting than 
his own. 

The Rev. W. H. Holmes, D.D., Joliet District, Rock River The Greater 
Conference : The method that has just been spoken of was in- e p 
augurated by my predecessor on the district that I serve, and was 
continued by myself. Since then we have adopted some other 
plans. But I think the exchange plan was the greatest help in 
bringing the district up to its full apportionment. The end can 
be accomplished fully as well on a country district by working it 
by groups of changes rather than by attempting to carry out a 
general interchange throughout the whole district. In this way 
the work can be accomplished within three weeks' time. 

The Rev. J. B. Trimble, D.D., Sioux City District, Northwest Subdistrict 
Iowa Conference : On many districts it is found that the pastors ans 
are not intensely interested in these conventions. The general 
plan in Iowa is to divide the district into four subdistricts, and 
visit not only every subdistrict, but every appointment on the 
district. We begin with the exchange of pulpits and pastors. 
That calls the people together and advertises the plan. Then we 



360 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

have missionary meetings on the following Wednesday, Thurs- 
day, and Friday — giving two evenings and a day to each charge. 
We get out dodgers, spend some money, and send the preachers 
out and have them bill the town. We invite everybody. The 
people wonder what is going on, and that gets out a crowd. We 
use a large missionary map, such as we are getting from the 
Missionary Society for three dollars now. We have that map 
hanging there for two evenings and a day, so the people can learn 
the location of our missionary fields. All our people need is the 
information and they will give the money. 

A Spring The Rev. W. G. Hohanshelt, Creston District, Des Moines 

Campaign Conference : We plan a missionary campaign in the early spring. 
There seems then to be a good deal of vitality among the people, 
as well as in nature generally. We have the whole district divided 
into sections, and the pastors go from these subdistrict meetings 
to their own churches. We pay no attention to whether our 
roads are muddy or not. After the campaign had covered the 
whole district, then the collections are taken. I send a bulletin, 
on the Monday after the offering has been received, to every 
church; in that way preachers are intelligent and enthusiastic 
over the work that has been done all over the district. This con- 
vention work is supplemented by tracts, which are freely dis- 
tributed, and everything is done that can be done to make the 
preachers write a new sermon on missions, one that will touch 
the hearts — and not only one, but four or five. 

importance of The Rev. C. U. Wade, Muncie District, North Indiana Con- 
ference : We have three sessions in our conventions in local 
churches, and we cover the whole subject of our benevolent in- 
terests, addresses being made upon the work of each society. The 
result has been that we have increased our subscriptions, and the 
plan has resulted in the stirring up of every preacher. If the 
pastor lays this cause upon his heart the people are willing to give. 
I find that as new preachers come into my district, often they are 
not interested in missions, and I find it necessary to get with them 
and talk with them and plead with them. As the result, every 
one of them swings into line. 

Giving on a The Rev. G. B. Smith, Canton District, East Ohio Confer- 
Prayer asis ence . j k a( j a nove i experience this year at one point. The pastor 



PRESIDING ELDERS AND DISTRICT SECRETARIES 36 1 

had worked up the missionary interest to such a pitch that he 
felt he must do something out of the ordinary. The charge con- 
sists of two hundred and seventy-eight members, and two 
appointments, at both of which the collection for missions had 
been taken. At the country appointment I was to ask for an 
additional offering. The first thing we did was to have the 
love feast and the sacrament; then I preached. At the con- 
clusion of that sermon we distributed cards. Then I said, "Let 
us kneel, and everyone ask what the Lord would have him give 
this year in addition to what he has already contributed." I will 
give you the experience of one man. He said, "I had intended 
to subscribe ten dollars, but while on my knees I concluded the 
Lord would not excuse me unless I gave fifteen dollars ;" and 
that man made his subscription twenty-five dollars. That day 
there was taken up in that church two hundred dollars in addition 
to what had been given. The Holy Spirit was present, and it 
was the best time I ever had. That charge gave five hundred and 
six dollars to missions. 

The Rev. O. B. Coit, St. Lawrence District, Northern New 
York Conference : I find that those pastors who look out for the ° e ai s 
little things are the ones who do the best in their collections. I 
believe the subdistrict convention plan and this other plan which 
has been stated are good ones, and I believe in the presiding elder 
preaching a missionary sermon in every pulpit in his district 
each year. 

The Rev. H. C. Stuntz, D.D., Philippine District, Malaysia The Elder and 
Conference : Presiding elders can make it easy or hard for their secretary 
district missionary secretaries. Some presiding elders get an 
immense amount of work out of the district secretary, and others 
do not. The district secretary ought to be a man who can talk 
on missions. He ought to load up, as Dr. Oldham said, with the 
best ammunition that can be had in the mission manufacturies of 
the world. Make it easy for these men to visit every church on 
your district. That is one thing the presiding elders can do. The 
district secretary can have an immense amount to do in relieving 
presiding elders in the matter of arranging their conventions and 
pushing interest in the convention. I count as much upon the 
visits of a living, tactful, persisting, well-informed district secre- 



362 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

tary in the churches as I do upon all the rest of his work put 
together. 

A POLICY ADOPTED 

1. To arrange a schedule whereby this Convention can be re- 
ported from every pulpit in the district, either by the presiding 
elders in their rounds of the Quarterly Conferences or by the 
district missionary secretaries, or by the pastors who are delegates 
to this Convention. 

2. To secure the appointment of a missionary committee in 
every church in accordance with section 366 of the Discipline. 

3. Presiding elders to have a conference with this committee 
concerning the nature of its work. 

4. Under the joint supervision of presiding elders, district mis- 
sionary secretary, and district Epworth League officers to arrange 
for a district missionary rally or a series of group rallies through- 
out the district to be addressed either by outside speakers or by 
delegates returning from this Convention. The public addresses 
to be followed by conferences for (a) Members of church mis- 
sionary committees; (b) Epworth League officers and committee- 
men; (c) Sunday school workers. Special effort will be made to 
secure the attendance of the following persons: (a) District 
officers ; (b) Pastors and members of the church missionary 
committee; (c) Epworth League officers; (d) Sunday school 
superintendents. 

5. To emphasize the Disciplinary plan of giving as set forth in 
paragraph 371 of the Discipline. 

6. Presiding elders in their rounds of the Quarterly Confer- 
ences to see to the appointment of competent missionary com- 
mittees of the Epworth League. 

7. Pastors to be urged to hold monthly missionary prayer 
meetings in accordance with paragraph 370 of the Discipline. 

8. To urge the use of monthly missionary exercises in the 
Sunday school as provided in section 374 of the Discipline, and 
by the constitution of the Sunday school missionary society, and 
contained in section 53 of the Appendix to the Discipline. 

9. To encourage the pastors not to be content with raising the 
apportionment in full, but to urge the people to give to the limit 
of their ability. 



WHAT THE PASTOR CAN DO 363 

WHAT THE PASTOR CAN DO 

SECTION CONFERENCE DISCUSSION 

The Rev. Edward M. Taylor, Cambridge, Mass. ; How fre- Only Half the 
quently we fall into the habit of thinking that the parish we Messa S e 
serve is the only place where our individuality is to be operative, 
that we are to be agreeably related to the men and women around 
us, and to see that our reports to the Annual Conference are 
worthy of the respect of those in authority ! How seldom we 
think otherwise than simply of the prosperity that belongs to the 
local church ! And yet that is only one half of the message of 
the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The man or woman who stands as a 
leader of another cause, with simply a partial conception of it, is 
bound to fall short of the highest realization of that cause. 
There is just where the missionary cause in our denomination 
halts, goes lame. The difficulty of the present hour arises out 
of the fact that as pastors and leaders of our people we have 
spent more time perhaps in developing the indigenous resources 
of the Church for local advantage than in a broader view of the 
Gospel. I do not say that has been intentional on our part, but 
something has been in the atmosphere for the last twenty-five 
years that has made it easy for us to neglect the broader and 
more comprehensive view of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As 
we realize what it is to be a servant of his, a shepherd of Ris 
flock, we cannot stop short of realizing this fact, that our bounden 
obligation as ministers of Jesus Christ is to preach and develop 
the unity of the flock of Christ where we teach and preach, and 
to apprehend this wider scope of the Gospel message. 

We are here this afternoon not simply to express our obliga- The 
tion, but to see if there is any practical way of coordinating the andPresenV 
rules of the Discipline with the condition of life that is in our Problems 
Church to-day. I imagine that if the laity of the Church should 
be made to realize that that book is their product and that the 
Methodist Discipline is not a product of a star chamber in connec- 
tion with Church officials, but the product of the laity of the 
Methodist Church, we would not have to stand in that current 
of opposition to Disciplinary rules that the minister often 
has to meet in the Quarterly Conference. The Discipline is a 
growth, it is an evolution of the years, and it is the wisdom of 



364 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



the whole history and the widest work of our Church. Some one 
has described the Methodist Discipline as a sleeping giant. We 
want this afternoon to talk about how to go home and wake up 
the sleeping giant for his work in connection with our Church 
life. 



The 

Missionary 

Committee 



The Rev. J. S. Chadwick, Brooklyn, N. Y. : My experience 
has been that in organizing a missionary committee the first 
thing to be done is to find out who of our members are inter- 
ested in missionary work; for in all our churches there are 
quite a number of people, and in some churches I fear they are 
in the majority, that have next to no interest in this work. It 
will not do to put that class of people on the committee, for if we 
put them there we have assured failure in advance. But in every 
church also there is a number of men and women who are deeply 
interested in missions. I had hardly reached my present appoint- 
ment last April before two of the elect women of the church came 
to myself and wife, to interest us in the work of the Woman's 
Home and the W T oman's Foreign Missionary Society, and they 
gave us no rest until we joined their societies and pledged our- 
selves to help them. That is the kind of men and women to put 
on the missionary committee. In making up this committee be 
sure to include some of your brightest and best young people. 
Find among them young men and young women who can be 
trusted to enter on this work. We are making a mistake, in that 
we are divorcing our old and our young to-day. In making up 
this committee put the young and the old together, and set them 
at work and keep your eye on them. And when you come to the 
last Quarterly Conference and call for the report of that commit- 
tee you will find good results. This is the experience of one who 
has been in the pastorate and the "elderate," as some one calls it. 



Monthly 
Missionary 
Prayer 
Meetings 



The Rev. A. E. Luce, Boothbay Harbor, Me.: One way to 
take this magnificent Convention home to our own fields is to 
begin, if we have not already begun, a monthly prayer meeting. 
We should provide for it the best array of talent we have in our 
churches. If we get a map with Paul's missionary journeys 
marked out upon it, and take the map with us into the monthly 
missionary meeting, and deal with those missionary journeys, 
we will reveal to our people something of the start of missions. 



WHAT THE PASTOR CAN DO 365 

If when we read anything recent from the fields we take this to 
them, that will help us in the prayer meeting to have something 
definite to pray about and to ask God's blessing upon, and we 
ourselves will be the better for it. My message, if it is for any- 
body, is to that man in the pastorate who has a small scattered 
field, and who says, "How can I organize a prayer meeting at 
my home ? I will have to do it all." You may have to do it all, 
and be like the preacher who managed the funeral, who had to 
sing, preach, pray, and be a bearer — everything but the corpse; 
but you can afford to have a missionary meeting even then. 

The Rev. John Handley, Long Branch, N. J. ; I made up Two Valued 
my mind two months ago to use one prayer meeting of the month Helps 
for a missionary topic, and I desired to get hold of the thing 
that was practical, if I did not want to do all the work myself. 
I discovered two means within my reach: First, that the 
Sunday School Journal each month has one of the- simplest and 
most comprehensive missionary programs that has come within 
my reach. As all of our teachers and many of our scholars have 
the Sunday School Journal, I call their attention to the program 
and take the last midweek meeting in the month preceding the 
taking of our missionary collection in the Sunday school for that 
missionary meeting. Then I utilize the opportunity afforded 
by the Missionary Society, and distribute World-Wide Missions 
among the members who gave a dollar or more to the missionary 
cause. Among our members there are over one hundred and 
fifty copies circulated, and I ask the readers of that paper to 
come in on missionary prayer-meeting night and read the para- 
graph or sentence that particularly impressed them. In doing 
that I utilize The Sunday School Journal and World-Wide Mis- 
sions, and I bring to my prayer meeting and the church nuggets 
of gold with relation to the missionary field. 

The Rev. Appleton Bash, Beaver, Pa. : Opportunity is re- a Conception 
sponsibility, and responsibility predicates a judgment, and some ^ 1 ^ esponsl " 
day for our opportunities we must give an account to the great 
Head of the Church, the Lord Jesus Christ. I am afraid that 
many of us in the past have not measured up to the true concep- 
tion of our responsibility for the saving of this whole world and 
the bringing of men to Almighty God. For a great many years 



3 66 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Doubled 
Collections 



An 

Intrenched 

Church 



I simply omnibused my collections, and then for some years I 
preached half a missionary sermon and half an Easter sermon 
at Easter time. But when a man tries to cover the field of mis- 
sions in the ordinary limit of a sermon, you know about what 
the result would be. About a year ago I resolved to amend my 
ways. I made a list of people whom I wanted to take the World- 
Wide Missions and sent the list with a few dollars to have the 
paper sent to them. I believe it is perfectly legitimate, that if 
you can put the dollar in yourself you can put in some other 
man's name. Then I resolved to preach two or three sermons 
without a collection. Then I talked about the subject here and 
there without any set missionary meeting. Even after what I 
have heard here to-day I don't propose to go home and have a 
monthly missionary meeting, but I will try to throw in some- 
thing about missions in every prayer meeting I have. On the 
missionary night the man that is not interested in missions is 
not there, and you can catch him oftentimes when he isn't looking. 
What was the result? I have a congregation of a little over 
four hundred. My missionary collections have run from three to 
four hundred dollars a year. We have done in the past as well 
as they seemed to expect of us ; but last year, as a result of the 
policy I have outlined, I received from the regular church offer- 
ings to the parent board over eight hundred dollars. I doubled 
our former collection, and then if we add what came from the 
Woman's Foreign Missionary Society and the Home Missionary 
Society it amounted to over twelve hundred dollars. My point 
is simply this, that if we as pastors are faithful to our opportuni- 
ties, instead of the general average of our Church being twenty- 
five or fifty cents, it will be three to four dollars per member for 
every congregation in Methodism. We have been making the 
mistake that was made by General McClellan. It is an historical 
fact that General McClellan was perhaps the greatest disci- 
plinarian we had in the army, perhaps one of the greatest 
organizers, a magnificent man inside of the trenches ; and you 
know that down in the Peninsula he threw up his intrenchments 
and was crying always for reinforcements, and seeming not to 
care whether any other great division of the army was robbed, 
so long as his was strengthened. I sometimes think when I hear 
the addresses at our Annual Conferences that there is a great 
deal of General McClellan in them. It is simply calling for funds 



WHAT THE PASTOR CAN DO 367 

for general objects. After a while, in the providence of God, Mr. 
Lincoln found a little man out in the West and brought him to the 
White House and said to him, "General Grant, Almighty God 
and the people of the United States expect you to take Richmond, 
and to take it mighty quick." The great battle was fought and 
the principles for which we fought were victorious, and our 
Union again was one, and, bless God, it shall be inseparable for- 
ever. Now, it seems to me that what we want to do as pastors is 
to get outside of our intrenchments and do something. I believe 
that every one of us, in the name of the blessed Master and for 
the sake of lost souls everywhere, ought to go back to our homes, 
perhaps have our missionary prayer meetings, but certainly in 
some way get information into the minds of the people and put 
enthusiasm into their hearts, until they will feel it a great bless- 
ing to spend and be spent for the Lord Jesus Christ. There is 
too much of sentiment and not enough of actual toil in many of Much 
our congregations. I have watched my people often singing with ^tlTToil 
seraphic countenances : 

" Were the whole realm of nature mine, 

That were a present far too small ; 
Love so amazing, so divine, 

Demands my soul, my life, my all ; " 

and even with the tears flowing down their faces I have seen 
them put their hands in their pockets and go down past all the 
gold and the greenbacks and the silver and put a "measley" 
copper cent in the collection basket. 

Recognizing the fact that we stand where we can nullify the 
effort of every bishop and of every presiding elder and of every 
editor and of every secretary in a thousand ways — the pastor, if 
not in sympathy, can nullify the effort of the Church to reach 
the people; he is the man through whom they are reached — if 
we shall be faithful and shall step into the breach, speedily 
this emergency call for an extra million dollars shall be met, and 
hereafter it shall be four or five million dollars a year poured 
into the treasury, and all the world round we shall hear the song 
of salvation and we shall have the privilege of joining in the 
final peal. 

The Rev. W. F. Sheridan, Louisville, Ky. : I would like to 
indicate one or two things that I find helpful in spreading mis- 



3 68 



THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



Missionary 
Illustrations 
in Sermons 



A Missionary 
Literature of 
Quality 



sionary literature. I consider that we have, in the immense 
amount of missionary literature now before the Church, one of 
the most effective means of disseminating missionary informa- 
tion and of arousing missionary enthusiasm. I have made it a 
point for some years to weave in a great deal of missionary in- 
formation, and missionary inspiration I think, too, by means of 
illustrations in my sermons drawn from the lives of our leading 
missionaries, all of them abounding with thrilling incidents, to 
illustrate the topics which we bring before the people. In the 
second place, I have found it advisable to use tracts. A tract is 
a very little thing, and yet in the case of Bishop Thoburn you 
know it was simply a little tract that fell into his hands that 
caused the fire of missionary zeal and purpose to begin to glow ; 
and it was that little tract that began his missionary career. So 
I have sent out from time to time in my pastoral letters to my 
people little tracts. One Christmas, when I sent Christmas greet- 
ings I inclosed a little tract on the death of Charles Gray at 
Singapore. I remember that a lady of my church told me not 
long afterward, "My husband thought you were not very wise 
in spending that much money for tracts." Later he was very 
ill, and woke his wife up at one o'clock at night and said, "Wife, 
that man Gray that was told about in that tract Mr. Sheridan 
sent me was a fine fellow, wasn't he ?" The upshot of it was that 
this godless man began to pray for himself, and died a few 
weeks after that, saved by the influence of this tract. 

We are to-day knee-deep in the very best literature of the world 
on the subject of missions, and it seems to me that we are 
criminally negligent if we do not lay hold of this splendid agency 
and use it. I am projecting a course of reading for the young 
men and women of our town this winter which we call the Trinity 
Reading College. In the list of two hundred books sent out we 
recommend about twenty missionary books, and we hope that a 
part of the seven books which those who join the reading college 
pledge theselves to read will be missionary books. So, by keeping 
the subject before them, first by World-Wide Missions, second 
by tracts packed with missionary information, third by the best 
missionary books, and fourth by using the splendid illustrated 
material that abounds on every hand in the lives of our heroic 
leaders of missions, we can, I believe, set our people on fire with 
missionary enthusiasm. 



WHAT THE PASTOR CAN DO 369 

Dr. Jesse B. Young, Cincinnati, O. : Every man ought to Value of 
take a missionary magazine, and he ought to be one — a magazine Ma £ azines 
of missionary information. Of course, he has at hand the two 
monthlies published by the women's organizations. He ought to 
have the Gospel in All Lands; he ought to read the Missionary 
Review of the World. He ought to send a dime early in January 
or February and get the large volume published by the Missionary 
Society, a yearly volume which is packed full of information of 
all kinds of missionary data which he needs to have at hand when 
he studies his own denominational relation to missionary opera- 
tions. And then he ought to have, as our brother has just sug- 
gested, in his library a department of missionary biography. It The Study of 
is the most quickening and fascinating department of my library. J^IL^i^ 
The man who knows these great missionaries, who is in touch 
with their history, who has stated an outline of their lives, who 
has gone in fancy with them across the prairies and the mountains 
and into dark continents and over great mountain and river bar- 
riers, who has accompanied them in cannibal lands, in heathen 
countries, and has come in touch with their heroism, cannot help, 
if he has any sort of Gospel fervor, but find his heart responding 
in quickening touch to this contact and companionship. And the 
man who will do that, and then, out of the gathered information 
and inspiration that has come to him, give out enlarged informa- 
tion and quickening power to his congregation, will find the re- 
sult of it in an enlarged collection. 

The Rev. J. L. Reeder, Concepcion, Chile : I want to express 
my thanks to the pastors who are personal friends of mine, and 
who have sent me literature for the last four or five years. I 
speak as a pastor, and as a teacher from the field. It has been 
my pleasure to serve a congregation of English-speaking people 
on the west coast of South America, and you may want to know 
what I have done with the literature which you have sent me; 
for I believe you have sent me tons of papers and Sunday school 
literature which your schools have collected from time to time. 

There is one encouraging fact with regard to sending literature Sending 
to the mission fields, especially to South America. All the ^Forei 6 n t0 
literature in English which you may find in your heart to send Field 
them can be distributed through the length and the breadth of the 
land — it is not very broad, but is twenty-six hundred miles long — 
U 



3^0 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

free of expense ; for according to the laws of Chile all periodicals 
go free. It has been my privilege to have mailing lists of nearly 
one thousand English-speaking people throughout the length 
of the country, from Point Arenas on the Straits of Magellan to 
Iquique in the north. I have been pastor of an English-speaking 
church and pastor of a bethel at a port where five hundred ships 
call every year to carry away saltpeter from the chief saltpeter 
market of the world. I come in contact with thousands of 
English sailors who beg me for reading matter. I have received 
barrels of literature from Vermont, where it was my privilege 
to serve a church. I have distributed this literature — magazines, 
the Advocates, the Epzvorth Herald — broadcast, and I think I 
can truly say that the world is my parish ; for these white-sailed 
messengers of commerce come from all parts of the world. It 
was my privilege last year to visit some ships which had been 
there the year before, and I still saw the Western Christian Ad- 
vocate filed away in the cabins of the officers of those ships. It 
was a delight to see that the literature you sent out had been so 
prized. 

Systematic The Rev. L. H. Stewart, Massillon, O. : One word about 

iving ire es ^ e relation of the pastor to the Epworth League in this mission- 
ary work. The thing that we need to do as pastors is to organize 
our Epworth Leagues into systematic giving circles. When I 
took the charge I now have the Epworth League had done lit- 
erally nothing for missions. We organized the members into a 
systematic giving circle, and during the year they raised one 
hundred and twenty dollars, just by giving a cent, two cents, five 
cents a week, each one of them that would subscribe to that sys- 
tematic giving circle. The missionary committee of my Epworth 
League brought in a report that they had adopted the same plan 
for the coming year, and I expect them to raise two hundred 
dollars this year without subtracting a single penny from the 
regular missionary collection. The one thing, I believe, that is 
needed on the part of the pastor to meet the problem of all prob- 
lems, so far as our Epworth Leagues are concerned, is to give 
them something to do. We supposed that they would be a great 
army for a great forward movement of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. Observation has shown that it has not accomplished 
what we hoped it would ; and it will not until we get it organized. 



WHAT THE PASTOR CAN DO 371 

The Rev. J. Wesley Potter, Bloomfield, la. : I am very The Pastor a 
sure the reason why the Epworth League was not a great right £g a E ^ r orth 
arm of power immediately after its organization was because too 
many of the pastors supposed it would be such and withdrew, 
thinking it would run itself, find work to do, and do a great deal 
for the Church, and perhaps carry some of our burdens. I am 
persuaded that if we would more closely identify ourselves as 
pastors with our local Epworth League, and be Epworth Leaguers 
ourselves, stay in the League and direct its efforts, put informa- 
tion into the hands of the Leaguers, give them something to do, 
they would not only be glad to do it, but the result would be 
apparent. 

The Rev. T. J. Leak, Pittsburg, Pa. : I am convinced that we The League 
are on the wrong track entirely in making financial institutions of | Training 
our Epworth Leagues. The League was not organized as a 
great arm of service in the Methodist Church. It was organized 
as a training school for our young people, to teach them how to 
pray and sing and tell their experience in Christian meetings. 
They have their opportunities to give, without giving through the 
Epworth League. Ninety-nine out of a hundred of them are 
members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and their first 
loyalty in the giving line is to the Church and not to the League. 
I tell the members of my League that they have no business to 
give one penny to the Missionary Society through the League 
until they have met their obligations to the Church. As members 
of the Church they are under obligations to meet missionary de- 
mands. I am satisfied that large numbers of the young people of 
our communities are kept away from our League because of that 
one difficulty. Very many young men and young women in our 
large cities are compelled to live in a hand-to-mouth manner. 
They have very little money beyond what is absolutely required 
to feed and lodge and clothe them ; and to constantly have our 
agents going to them for the Missionary Society makes it burden- 
some. All the societies want help. The education along these 
lines is all correct. We ought to have these books, this literature. 
We ought to tell our young people all about these things. We 
ought to have in the Epworth League a monthly missionary meet- 
ing to educate them. But let us direct their money into the regu- 
lar channels of the Church. Our Sunday schools are missionary 



?tf2 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

societies, by the order of the Discipline, and our Epworth 
Leaguers belong to the Sunday school. There is a demand upon 
them there every month, and throughout the Church provision is 
made for the taking up of collections. I protest against the whole 
The League matter of making our Epworth Leagues agencies for financial 
Financial enterprises. Teach them all you can, but teach them to give their 
Agency money through the regular, organized channels, and don't add to 

their financial burdens. Then give the young people an oppor- 
tunity to get together from time to time without the expectation 
that money is to be demanded of them, and don't expect them to 
do your revival and financial work. You are to do the work for 
them ; the Church is to work for the League and not the League 
for the Church. Then it will work for the Church. 

An Outlet for The Rev. J. A. Johnson, Fairbury, 111.: I am in sympathy 
Needed iaSm with this brother who has just spoken of pouring into the League 
missionary intelligence, circulating our libraries, etc., until they 
feel like taking a hand in this great work. The other Sunday 
evening we had our missionary meeting, and the treasurer said : 
"While every other organization of the church is represented in 
the pastor's report of contributions to missions, the League is not. 
If the League will give one cent per week, or five cents a month, 
this League will contribute seventy-five or one hundred dollars a 
year for that purpose." He put it to a vote, and the League 
unanimously voted to adopt that plan. When the cabinet met, 
one of our brethren drew the "little black book" and quoted the 
provision of the constitution of the League that it shall not be 
used for the collection of any money except for its League ex- 
penses. I believe that if we pour in the missionary enthusiasm 
and intelligence into our League there ought to be a provision by 
which we can garner in the dollars. 

The Sunday The Rev. T. A. H. O'Brien, Wilmington, Del. : I serve a 

church in the city of Wilmington that grew out of a Sunday 
school. We celebrated our fiftieth anniversary last May. The 
Sunday school is organized into a missionary society. We take 
a collection every Sunday for missions. I see to it that the teach- 
ers have the latest missionary information. Everything that I see 
bearing on the subject of missions, that I think the pupils ought 
to have, I secure and put into their hands. Then I impress them 



School 



WHAT THE PASTOR CAN DO 373 

with the importance of having their classes meet them at their 
homes once a month, and they give to their classes the latest in- 
formation on the subject of missions. As a result, our Sunday 
school's contribution to missions exceeds in dollars the number 
of the members of our Sabbath school. 

The Rev. G. F. Sutherland, Maquoketa, la. : We should see The 
that the young people are intelligent on the subject of missions, campaten^ 
Our Sunday schools should place more emphasis on this matter Libraries 
of education. I know of Sunday schools that take collections 
once a month for missions, and the children do not know what the 
money is going for. I believe that our Epworth League should 
become better informed, and this may be done through the mis- 
sionary study class where Epworth Leaguers and Sunday school 
teachers gather together for the definite study of missions. Our 
Sunday schools in their monthly missionary meetings, our Ep- 
worth Leagues in their monthly missionary meetings, will be 
drawing from these young people testimony and information they 
have gathered from missionary books such as are in the Mission- 
ary Campaign Libraries. The key to all the work is missionary 
intelligence and the key to missionary intelligence among our 
young people is the missionary study class ! 

The Rev. C. G. Doney, Columbus, O. : We have a Sabbath Support of 
school whose attendance is three hundred and twenty-six. We Abroad 
maintain an interest in missions by supporting and educating a 
girl and a boy in the foreign field. We also contribute to the regu- 
lar fund. We make three special days in the year: the day on 
which we take our collection for the lad that we are educating, the 
day also on which we receive offerings for the girl, a day also in 
which we receive our regular educational contribution. Once a 
month, however, our contribution is for the support of the general 
fund. We have hanging upon the walls of the Sunday school 
room the pictures of the girls that in years past have been cared 
for and educated. We have from the girls that have already 
received their education, and from the boys, letters now and then, 
and from the missionaries who have had them in charge and 
who are now in charge of them. Our Sunday school collection 
will average about nine dollars a Sunday. That comes from 
practically all the scholars. Not any give largely, but I am safe 



374 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

in saying that nearly all give something. In this way we have 
no difficulty in maintaining the expenses of the school and in 
doing something for the larger interests of the kingdom abroad. 

A Higher The Rev. George B. Smyth, field secretary of the Missionary 

Plane Society: The whole subject of missions needs to be raised to a 

higher plane altogether in the thought of the Church than it has 
occupied hitherto. When I came back from China some time 
ago one of the first letters I received was from a ' brother in 
Kansas whose name and Conference I don't remember, and this 
was the request which he made me. He said : "I hear that you 
have just come back from China, where you have lived for a good 
many years, and I am making a collection of gods and goddesses 
in order to travel about this district and exhibit them to the 
people, to increase their interest in missionary work. If you can 
send any Chinese gods or goddesses I shall be much obliged." I 
pitied the district in Kansas which had to depend for its mission- 
ary interest upon the exhibition of gods and goddesses by a man 
who knew nothing about the one or the other. 
The Command One trouble is that the whole subject of missions is considered 
of Christ as some thing entirely outside of the regular work of t 1 - ~ Church. 

It is considered a sort of strain or extra kind of philanthropy or 
charity, and appeals are constantly made to the people's sym- 
pathy, and harrowing descriptions are given of the lives of the 
heathen. Pastors often forget this great fact, that the only 
foundation upon which interest in this work can be based at all is 
obedience to the personal command of Jesus Christ. We are not 
to send missionaries to the heathen, because these people bind 
their feet or worship little wooden idols. The sole basis is that 
they don't know the God whom Jesus Christ has revealed, no 
matter what kind of gods or goddesses they worship. And I 
find this, that where a pastor has emphasized this fundamental 
basis of the missionary work, and has treated it as one of the 
fundamental purposes of the Church, there he has succeeded in 
raising large missionary collections. 
An Essential Again, we ought to deal with this matter systematically. A great 
Church Work man y P ast ors treat of the subject of missions but once a year, and 
that unfortunately at the time when the missionary collection is 
to be taken up. We ought to regard missions as an essential part 
of the work of the Church. Some time ago I was up in central 



WHAT THE PASTOR CAN DO 375 

Idaho, where I met a preacher who told me that when he began 
his ministry in that church the people were giving a few cents 
per member, and there was no Woman's Foreign Missionary 
Society at all. He said : "This is part of the regular work of the 
Church. There are fifty-two Sundays on which I may preach; 
why shouldn't I give a proper number of those to this great work 
of foreign missions?" So once a month he gave them a summary 
of the missionary work of the month, so far as he could learn it. 
And after treating the subject in this systematic way the result 
was that in twelve months the members of that little church were 
giving over a dollar a' member, and there was a Woman's Foreign 
Missionary Society which was subscribing seven dollars a mem- 
ber per annum. That was the result of treating missionary work 
systematically. 

I have spent the quarter of my life on the foreign field, and do A Systematic 
not know as well as you do how the people in this country ought rea men 
to be approached on the subject of missions. But of one thing I 
am certain, and that is that it ought to be treated systematically 
and as an essential part of the work of the Church, and that in- 
terest in it ought to be looked upon as an essential part of the 
Christian character. Of this I am most assured, that the degree 
of interest in missions felt by members of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church will depend upon the degree of their own religious life. 
Get them to love God, to feel the power of Jesus Christ in their 
own hearts, and then we shall have no trouble in trying to interest 
them in the work of Jesus Christ abroad. 

The Rev. Hugh Johnston, D.D., Baltimore, Md. : It strikes The 
me that the apportionment should be the minimum, the very least, Jj^^^" 
our churches should give to this work of missions. We are in Minimum 
charge of the commissariat, and we cannot furnish supplies for 
the conquest of the world by an annual plate collection of dimes 
and nickels. Our missionaries who are at the front are our rep- 
resentatives who are fighting the battle for us; and when they 
are calling for fresh supplies, when they are calling for help, in 
all fairness to our brethren we owe it to them to send on, if pos- 
sible, the needed reinforcements. The General Missionary Com- 
mittee can very greatly help the cause by encouraging the 
churches not only to raise the apportionment, but also to take 
upon them the charge of individual missionaries and native help- 



376 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

ers. This can be done if each preacher has been brought to feel 
the responsibility of that command, "Go ye into all the world, and 
preach the Gospel," and to realize that it is for him to go or to 
send. It will very greatly strengthen him if he feels that for four 
dollars a month he can have a substitute in the foreign field to 
carry on the work for him there. Our churches can do very much 
more than is involved in simply raising the apportionment as- 
signed them. I have the privilege of serving a church where a 
brother, who contributes regularly to meet this apportionment, 
has been sustaining schools, and through his noble giving in the 
last twelve or fifteen years there has been added to the foreign 
membership of the Church thirty thousand members. 

How The Rev. G. E. Strobridge, New York city : I think there is 

ment^re" no q ues ti° n that the full apportionment for missions should be 
Made considered the minimum ; it should be the bottom, should be that 

from which and above which we should plan to build. If I am 
correctly informed and understand it aright that apportionment 
is itself, by the action of the General Committee, a minimum sum ; 
that is, they have looked over the entire field of work; they see 
how much money is needed; then they fix on a total sum less 
than the actual need, and this sum is apportioned to the churches. 
And we should certainly consider it the smallest amount that the 
church can give, and ought to aim in every case to add to it. We 
all know that if a church gives well one year the next year its 
apportionment will be raised ; we have found that out by experi- 
ence. If our church does well, phenomenally well, and we are 
sticking feathers in our hats, at the next session of the Quarterly 
Conference we will be informed that our apportionment has been 
raised, and there is sometimes a little feeling about that. And 
there is a disposition among some of our official brethren not to 
do the best they can, for the very reason that they will be asked 
to do still more next time. I think it is a compliment that they 
should venture to ask more of us than we gave the past year At 
all events, let us ease our consciences, and feel that we are all 
right with God by calling that the bottom sum, and build it up. 
We can accomplish the result in part through the monthly mis- 
sionary prayer meeting. I am in a church that is very conserva- 
tive, an old church where they bank themselves on their prayer 
meetings. It is one of their great things ; it is a magnificent meet- 



Sought 



WHAT THE PASTOR CAN DO 2)77 

ing, one of the largest I ever had, full of earnestness and spiritu- 
ality, and to break in once a month with a missionary prayer 
meeting would be almost a convulsion. But we have flanked 
somewhat by putting a little elasticity in the "little black book," 
and started with a missionary prayer meeting once in three The 
months. We have had two and the people have enjoyed them p r "y e ° nftry 
amazingly. My belief is that when they become really enamored Meeting 
of this meeting we will have it once in two months, and then r0 em 
once a month, without breaking the current of that splendid 
prayer meeting to which they are accustomed. I think that if 
through the prayer meeting we educate the people intellectually 
and spiritually we will have no trouble in making that the 
minimum amount, and then even stand an additional apportion- 
ment from year to year. 

A POLICY ADOPTED 

We, the pastoral delegates to the First General Missionary a Wider 
Convention of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in Section Con- ^^JfJ* 
ference assembled, believing that all men are responsible accord- 
ing to the measure of their opportunity for the world's conver- 
sion, do solemnly pledge ourselves to do all that is within our 
power to arouse a wider and more enthusiastic interest in the sub- 
ject of missions, and to use our best endeavors to secure the 
cooperation and sympathy of all our people in the great forward 
movement of the Church; and that this may be done the more 
effectively we make the folowing recommendations : 

1. The appointment of a missionary committee in every church, 
according to paragraph 366 of the Discipline. 

2. The appointment of a missionary committee in every Ep- 
worth League, according to Article IV, section I, of the Epworth 
League Constitution. 

3. The maintenance of a monthly missionary prayer meeting 
in every church, as provided in paragraph 370 of the Discipline, 
aiming to secure the participation of as many members as possible 
in these meetings, and to secure the reading of missionary books 
in preparation therefor. 

4. The use of the monthly missionary exercises each month in 
every Sunday school, provided in paragraph 374 of the Discipline, 
and in the Sabbath school, paragraph 53 of the Appendix, and as 
outlined in the Sunday School Journal. 



37& 



THE CLEVELAND. MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



5. The adoption by all our members, especially the young, of 
the Disciplinary plan of giving, as outlined in paragraph 371 of 
the Discipline. 

6. The preaching of frequent sermons and making repeated 
reference to missionary books and heroes, in such a way as to 
induce the reading of missionary literature by the congregation. 

7. The recommendation and circulation of missionary books 
in connection with pastoral calls. 

8. The readiness to report this Convention to neighboring 
churches, as opportunity may offer and as duties may permit. 

9. The sending of copies of this policy, signed by the pastoral 
delegates, to each district, together with a personal letter to each 
pastor of the district who has been unable to attend this Con- 
vention. 

10. The carrying out, as far as possible, of the plans contained 
on pages 23 and 36 of the Workers' Manual of the Open Door 
Emergency Movement. 

11. To regard the apportionment in full, whether the appor- 
tionment be made at the office in New York, by the district com- 
mittee, or by whatever authority, as the minimum sum to be 
raised in every church, the maximum being the church's ability 
to pay. 



WHAT THE LAY WORKER CAN DO 



Definite 
Methods 
Suggested 



SECTION CONFERENCE DISCUSSION 

Mr. Horace Hitchcock, Detroit, Mich. : The Discipline pro- 
vides that a missionary committee should be appointed at the last 
Quarterly Conference held during the Conference year, and that 
it is the duty of that committee to assist the pastor in working 
up the interests of missions in the church. There are no definite 
methods mentioned in connection with this announcement of the 
appointment of the committee. In the church with which I am 
connected this rule has been carried out, so far as the appointment 
of the committee is concerned, but I feel that it has not been of 
very great service in the church, except in assisting the pastor in 
seeing that the collection is increased. My thought in regard to 
the usefulness of this committee is that in the first place it should 
be a prompter to the pastor. He is called upon by every depart- 



WHAT THE LAY WORKER CAN DO 379 

ment of the church to devote time and energy in its development. 
The local committee would have a most excellent opportunity to 
prompt the pastor in doing such work as may be provided. Then, 
too, the pastor might be relieved of very much of his burden by 
this committee. If the committee would develop a series of 
meetings each year, perhaps connected with the regular prayer 
meeting, for the purpose of educating our people in the things 
that pertain to missionary work, and aside from our Church 
papers and in addition thereto see that missionary literature gets 
into our families, and urge the people to read it, and thus create 
in their hearts a greater interest in the spread of the Gospel 
throughout the world, they could do a great work. The local 
committee should also see that the Sunday school of the church 
carries out the Disciplinary plan. I know from observation and 
experience that the missionary society connected with the Sunday Value of the 
schools is really of no very great value, simply for the reason that ?!? d ^ y 
it is a machine that is not worked. It is never oiled- and seldom Missionary 
is there any power applied to it, and therefore little or nothing is Societ y 
done. I believe the Sunday school is a power, and if we want a 
missionary church, then we need the addition of a missionary 
Sunday school to aid in the creating of an interest in the hearts 
of the boys and girls. 

Mr. L. M. Hall, Garden City, Kan. : In my experience, the Zealous Men 
missionary committee in the local church has failed to do much, ^ j£ m mittee 
if anything, but the failure may have been on the part of the 
pastor in selecting proper men. If a layman is a godly man his 
heart goes out across the oceans, and he has great zeal for the 
evangelization of the world. Such men may greatly aid the cause, 
and if they have this feeling they can be of great assistance to 
the pastor. The pastor should be more judicious in trying to 
place these important trusts in the hands of godly men, men of 
zeal for the cause and the extension of the kingdom of our blessed 
Master. 

Mr. D. L. Tuttle, Buffalo, N. Y. : The laymen can help in Arousing 
several ways. One way is in arousing the enthusiasm of the En thusiasm 
members of the church. The pastor who makes up or selects the Members 
members to work in this committee has difficulty in getting per- 
sons to serve, and it does his heart good to hear some one say, 



380 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

"Here am I, send me." In getting up this committee, in addition 
to strong members, a thorough organization is necessary. In the 
second place, the layman who wishes to arouse his Sunday school 
must set the scholars a pattern himself, and he must give of his 
means and must pray unceasingly. Let us not lose sight of the 
fact also that God has intrusted us with the money we possess, and 
we are not doing our duty until we have paid our debts to him, 
according to our condition. We may think we cannot do much, 
but let us do what we can cheerfully. 

Large Sunday Mr. D. S. Gray, Columbus, O. : In the Broad Street Methodist 
Episcopal Church, Columbus, the Sunday school expenses are 
paid out of a budget of the church. The Sunday school is or- 
ganized into a missionary society, and every Sabbath a missionary 
collection is taken by classes and announced. The Sunday school 
does not average over four hundred in attendance, with a weekly 
collection of fourteen or fifteen dollars, but in this way we make 
up seven or eight hundred dollars for missions. 



Personal Mr. E. B. Moore, Elizabeth, N. J. : I would suggest that we 

Missionaries & et * n toucn w * tn some one missionary, so that we can look upon 
him as our own. We have found that when we are in direct touch 
with an individual missionary it brings the subject home to us, 
and when our superintendent or our pastor writes, and that letter 
is answered by the individual, then we learn something about the 
work. I believe it is possible for every church and every Sunday 
school to be thus represented and to be in touch with a particular 
missionary, in a particular field, and I believe it will work for 
great good, as it has in our experience, and it will be a wonderful 
encouragement to the missionary to know that several hundred 
prayers are being regularly offered up in his behalf. 

Business Men Mr. L. D. Wishard, New York city : I am led to believe that 
an issions w j iat we neec | j s more reading and more considering of the facts 
in regard to missions. One of the most widely known business 
men said to me that he did not have time to read. He has a good 
deal of interest in missions, but he doesn't read, he doesn't know 
the great facts in regard to missions. If all our Christian business 
men would read two or three good missionary books it would 
settle the missionary question so far as money is concerned. Have 
we read Blaikie's Personal Life of David Livingstone f Any 



WHAT THE LAY WORKER CAN DO 381 

man who reads that book will want to go to Africa, but whether 
or not it takes us to Africa, a man is not prepared to stay in 
America until he has desired to give his life to the needy fields. 
I know of a man who has read a good many missionary books, 
and two or three years ago he invested a couple of hundred 
dollars in these books that he might have them to lend to busy 
men. One may or one may not find it possible, after dragging 
through the long hours of a business day, to go to the missionary 
meeting. He ought to do so, but he may not do it, but he can 
occasionally read one of these purifying and uplifting missionary 
books, and it will do him great good. 

A RESOLUTION ADOPTED 

It is the sense of this Laymen's Section Conference, in order Systematic 
that the pressing financ ; al needs of our Missionary Society may Gmn 8 
be amply met, and funds provided to carry out the work as 
planned, that we recommend that our pastors generally be re- 
quested to call the attention of their people to the subject of 
"Systematic Giving," that the people may be educated in this 
great line of Christian work and practice. 

A POLICY ADOPTED 

1. To secure the appointment in each church of a missionary 
committee as provided in paragraph 366 of the Discipline, and to 
give to this committee the benefit of the plans and suggestions 
gathered at this Convention. 

2. To report this Convention to the home church and Epworth 
League, and the neighboring churches and Epworth Leagues, as 
opportunity may present. 

3. To promote the missionary finances in every church accord- 
ing to the Disciplinary plan, as provided in paragraph 370 of the 
Discipline. 

4. To urge the use of monthly missionary exercises in every 
Sunday school. 

5. To suggest to our pastors and to our respective churches the 
holding of monthly missionary prayer meetings in accordance 
with paragraph 370 of the Discipline. 

6. To begin quietly a systematic campaign of reading, loaning, 
and circulating the most interesting missionary books among the 
members of our local churches. 



382 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

WHAT THE YOUNG PEOPLE CAN DO 

A POLICY ADOPTED 

i. To secure the appointment of a missionary committee in our 
respective Epworth Leagues where such committees have not 
already been appointed. 

2. To secure the possession and circulation of one or both 
Missionary Campaign Libraries. 

3. To secure the organization of a mission study class in our 
respective Epworth Leagues. 

4. To study carefully The Missionary Spoke of the Epworth 
Wheel. 

5. To secure the use of a monthly missionary exercise in all 
our Sunday schools. 

6. To secure the appointment of a district missionary com- 
mittee if such committee has not already been appointed. 

7. To report this Convention to our Epworth Leagues and 
Sunday schools upon our return. 

8. To improve all opportunities of reporting the Convention 
to neighboring Epworth Leagues and Sunday schools. 

9. To endeavor to secure special attention to methods of mis- 
sionary work at our next district Sunday school and Epworth 
League conventions. 

10. To cooperate with our presiding elder and district mission- 
ary secretary in the conduct of missionary rallies through our 
district, endeavoring especially to secure the attendance of key 
workers from each Epworth League and Sunday school. 

11. To carry out in our Sunday school as far as possible the 
plans suggested in the Open Door Emergency Movement Work- 
ers' Manual, pages 28 to 32. 

12. To send copies of this policy to all Epworth League presi- 
dents and first vice presidents within the district, and to the dis- 
trict presidents and first vice presidents, these to be accompanied 
by a personal letter. 

13. To send copies of these resolutions to all Sunday school 
superintendents of each district, calling especial attention to the 
clauses pertaining to the Sunday school work and accompanying 
the policy with a personal letter. 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 



CONVENTION OFFICERS AND COMMITTEES 

Bishop E. G. Andrews, Chairman 

The Rev. Stephen O. Benton, D.D., Secretary 

Mr. J. G. Vaughan, Assistant Secretary 

GENERAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 

Bishop E. G. Andrews, Chairman 
Mr. S. Earl Taylor, Secretary 
The Rev. A. B. Leonard, LL.D. 
Henry K. Carroll, LL.D. 
The Rev. J. F. Goucher, LL.D. 

CLEVELAND LOCAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 

The Rev. Charles Bayard Mitchell, D.D., Chairman 
The Rev. John L. Hillman, D.D., Secretary 
Mr. Charles F. Laughlin, Treasurer 
The Rev. Ward Beecher Pickard, D.D. 
Mr. James R. Mills, Jr. 

GENERAL FINANCE COMMITTEE 

The Rev. J. O. Wilson, D.D. 

Mr. S. W. Bowne 

Mr. Archer Brown 

Mr. John S. Huyler 

Mr. Anderson Fowler 

Mr. A. H. De Haven 

Mr. John M. Cornell 

LOCAL FINANCE COMMITTEE 

Mr. L. D. Albin, Chairman 
Mr. C. F. Laughlin 
Mr. J. R. Mills, Jr. 
Mr. F. E. Stevens 
25 Mr. C. W. Thomas 



386 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 

ON ENLISTING DELEGATES 

Mr. Edmund D. Soper 
The Rev. Wilson S. Naylor 
Mr. W. Scott Corlis 



ON TRANSPORTATION 
Mr. W. C. McKee 

ON MISSIONARY EXHIBIT 
Mr. R. E. Diffendorfer 

ON PRESS AND GENERAL ADVERTISING 

Mr. Charles H. Fahs 

The Rev. S. J. Herben, Lit.D. 

ON PRINTED MATTER 

Mr. C. V. Vickrey 
Mr. Burton St. John 
The Rev. J. R. Woodcock 

ON MUSIC 

Mr. C. W. Keeler 
Mr. E. W. Peck 
The Rev. P. H. Metcalf 
Mr. Paul Gilbert 

BUSINESS COMMITTEE 

Mr. C. C. Michener 
Mr. E. T. Colton 

ON PLACE OF MEETING 
Mr. H. A. Wilbur 

ON USHERS 
Mr. A. J. Prentice 

ON SPEAKERS 
The Rev. Hedding B. Leech 

ON PROMOTION OF PRAYER 
The Rev. F. D. Gamewell, Ph.D. 



APPENDIX 387 

ON SECTION MEETINGS 

Mr. Charles V. Vickrey 

The Rev. George Milton Fowles 

The Rev. William W. Youngson 

ON FINANCIAL SESSION 

The Rev. J. F. Goucher, D.D. 
The Rev. A. B. Leonard, LL.D. 
Henry K. Carroll, LL.D. 
The Rev. W. F. Oldham, D.D. 
The Rev. G. B. Smyth, D.D. 
The Rev. F. D. Gamewell, Ph.D. 
The Rev. E. M. Taylor, D.D. 
The Rev. H. C. Stuntz, D.D. 

COMMITTEE ON REGISTRATION 

Mr. Harry Wade Hicks 

The Rev. Thomas Eddy Taylor, D.D. 

The Rev. Robert E. Harned 

Miss M. Elizabeth Hunter 

Miss Bessie Brooks 

ON POST OFFICE 
Mrs. Charles F. Laughlin 

ON INFORMATION BUREAU 
The Rev. Wilson S. Naylor 

ON RECEPTION OF DELEGATES 
The Presiding Elders and Pastors of Cleveland 



388 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A CARD SENT TO ALL PROSPECTIVE DELEGATES AND 
TO OTHERS ESPECIALLY INTERESTED 



Kememfcer in Uailp prapet tlje (General JHismonarp Con- 
tention of tlje jHet&oUifit Episcopal CImrcI), to ht 
fjelti in Clebelants, @i)to, <®cto&er 21 to 24, 1902 : 

That those whom God would have to lead the Church to 
larger and nobler achievements in world-wide evangelization 
may be designated as delegates and may be enabled to at- 
tend the Convention. 

That the speakers, in preparing their addresses, may know 
the mind of the Spirit, so that in very truth and with evi- 
dent power they may declare to the Church the will of God 
concerning present-day opportunities for advanced mission 
effort. 

That in fixing Convention details the local and general 
committees may seek and find divine guidance. 

That in every session of the Convention, whoever may be 
the speakers or the presiding officer, the presence of the 
great Master of Assemblies may be realized. 

That through the returning delegates the Convention may 
result in widespread conviction and determined effort on the 
part of the whole Church with reference to the fulfillment of 
our Lord's last command. 

" helping together . . ♦ ftp pour supplication*" 



APPENDIX 



389 



A CARD HANDED TO EACH DELEGATE ON HIS ARRIVAL 
AT CLEVELAND 



ft draper Caro for t&e use of ^Delegates imring tlje 
jFirst General Jftteimonatp Contention of tfte JHetf)-- 
ooist Episcopal C&ttrcfc Cieaelanfc, @!)to, (Bttabtv 
21 to 24, 1902. 

<©bject£ for ^Intercession. 

For a pervasive and constant spirit of prayer among dele- 
gates. "Pray without ceasing." 1 Thess. v, 17. 

For a realization by speakers, committees, and delegates 
of the power of God. " Is there anything too hard for me ?" 
Jer. xxxii, 27. 

For the evident presence and leadership of Jesus Christ in 
all sessions. " There am I in the midst." Matt, xviii, 20. 

For a stronger faith and a clearer realization of our re- 
sources in Christ. " All power is given unto me. . . . Lo, 
I am with you." Matt, xxviii, 18. 

For a manifestation of the unity of the Spirit throughout 
the gathering. " That they may be one." John xvii, 22. 

For a larger vision of world need. " Lift up your eyes> 
and look on the fields." John iv, 35. 

For a self-sacrificing readiness to face the issues of the 
Convention. " Even Christ pleased not himself." Rom. xv, 3. 

For the churches of Cleveland and vicinity, that they may 
experience a great spiritual uplift as a reflex result of the Con- 
vention. " There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth." 
Prov. xi, 24. 

For an adequate proclamation of the Convention's message 
throughout the whole Church. "As every man hath received 
the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good 
stewards of the manifold grace of God." 1 Pet. iv, 10. 

For a missionary awakening in our Church, that the urgent 
needs of the fields for men and means may be met. " Pray 
ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth 
laborers into his harvest." Luke x, 2. 

For all missionaries and native Christians, that upon them 
the Holy Spirit may come in abundant measure. " Ye shall 
receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you ; 
and ye shall be witnesses . . . unto the uttermost part of the 
earth." Acts i, 18. 



390 THE CLEVELAND MISSIONARY CONVENTION 



A CARD HANDED TO EACH DELEGATE ON HIS ARRIVAL 
AT CLEVELAND 



|)oto map % jjet X\t most ottt of X\z 
Oetoelanfc Contention 1 

By making daily use of the Convention prayer cycle and by 
unceasing prayer during the sessions. 

By watching for the best things in all sessions, thereby 
avoiding a spirit of unkind criticism. 

By restraining idle curiosity as to speakers and addresses. 

By conversing sparingly on social matters, thus redeeming 
the time. 

By seeking in the Spirit of Christ to adjust myself to all 
Convention plans and arrangements, and by overlooking 
those annoyances which are incidental to such a gathering. 

By so ordering my life during these Convention days that 
in all things Christ may have the preeminence. 

By personal appropriation and application of truth to my- 
self and work, thus seeking to understand and to obey the 
will of God concerning my own life. 

By recording for permanent use those ideas and plans 
which most pertain to the work which I represent at the 
Convention. 

By preferring another in honor, thus escaping the easily 
besetting sins of pride and jealousy. 

By looking to God rather than to any man, remembering 
that it is " not by might, nor by an army, but by my spirit, 
saith the Lord of hosts." 

" He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up 
for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all 
things?" Rom. viii, 32. 



APPENDIX 



391 



A CARD HANDED TO EACH DELEGATE ON THE LAST 
DAY OF THE CONVENTION 



J|)0to map % G3se tjje lessons of tins Contention^ 

''''The end of the Exploration is the beginning of the Enterprise.'" 

In that God has, in such a marked way, answered the prayers which 
were indicated on the Prayer Card used in preparation for the Conven- 
tion, asking for his guidance and blessing in the selection of delegates, 
the preparation of speakers, the arrangement of Convention details, and 
for the presence of the Holy Spirit in every session of the Convention. 

%y I ntzvttmtm 

Pray that each delegate may be true to the resolutions which he has 
formed during this Convention, and that he may earnestly devote himself 
and all his resources to the work of world evangelization. 

Pray that each delegate may be led in triumph over the temptations 
and perils which so easily beset one in going from a Convention like this. 

Pray that disobedience, selfishness, indolence, and unbelief may be far 
removed from us. 

Pray that the General Missionary Committee, at its meeting in Albany, 
November 12 to 18, may be divinely guided in devising far-reaching 
plans for the organization of the forces which have been made available 
through this Convention. 

Pray that the enlarged vision brought before us during this Convention 
may be realized, even beyond all that we ask or think. 

Pray that a sufficient number of properly qualified candidates may be 
forthcoming to meet the urgent needs of our different mission fields. 

Pray for the missionaries and native workers, that God may be with 
them and may demonstrate through them his marvelous power. 

<25g fie?ovution 

With the help of God I will unceasingly watch and pray that I quench 
not the Spirit. To this end I will study the Bible with renewed energy ; 
I will give myself to prayer ; I will engage with increased activity in 
the work of winning others to Jesus Christ. 

As a good steward I will seek to administer the gift which has come 
to me through this Convention, and I will do all in my power to arouse 
the Church to its world-wide opportunity, through meetings where the 
Convention will be reported, through District, Conference, State, and 
other denominational papers and through the local press ; through per- 
sonal interviews, designed to communicate to others the spirit of the 
Convention; through a fellowship with some missionary acquaintance; 
through a daily life, conforming to the high Christian standard set be- 
fore me during these days. 

"This is the Lord's doings and it is marvelous in our eyes" Matt, xxi, 42. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Addicks, G. B., address on "Our Foreign 
Populations and How to Reach Them," 
14, 112-120: Foreign peoples in the United 
States, here chiefly to stay, 112 ; their 
wrong views of our government, 112 ; 
prepared for vital Christianity, 112, 113 ; 
to be won by a direct, soul-converting 
Gospel, 113-116 ; best evangelized by use 
of their own tongue, 116 ; personal con- 
tact,n6, 117 ; encouraging results, 119,120. 

Africa, The Open Door in, 163-181. For 
analysis see Hartzell, J. C. Statistics, 
31 ; needs of, 32, 33 ; first foreign mission 
work of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
in, 42, 47. 

African Methodist Episcopal Church, 37. 

Alaska, Hawaii, and Porto Rico, 354-356. 
For analysis see Woodruff, Mrs. M. L. 

Alaska, work of Woman's Home Mission- 
ary Society in, 354, 355. 

American Bible Society, relation to Meth- 
odist missions, 38 ; volumes issued in 
1901, 69 ; number of Bibles sent to foreign 
lands, 70. 

American Board of Commissioners for 
Foreign Missions, 319. 

American soldiers in the Philippines, their 
faults and their work, 137, 138. 

Andrews, Bishop E. G., address on "The 
Purpose of the Convention," 13, 21-28 : 
Delegates welcomed, 21 ; the aim to 
bring light and inspiration, 22 ; review 
of missionary advance in the nineteenth 
century, 23 ; the new century's present 
outlook, 24 ; tasks that remain, 25 ; a 
fresh vision and a deeper devotion must 
come, 26 ; the mind of Christ, 27 ; a faith 
that dares, 28. Chairman of Program 
Committee, 5 ; presiding officer, 13 ; pro- 
nounced farewell benediction, 20. 

Anglo-Saxon, Gospel not alone for, 115 ; 
Methodism's service to, 134 ; reason for 
race superiority of, 154 ; sphere of in 
Africa, 165 ; Christianity's effect upon, 
196-198. 

Angola, outlook and needs of mission in, 
175, 176. 

Appeal from China, 316. See Chen Wei 
Cheng. 

Arabia, part of Southern Asia, 181. 

Argentina, its capacity to produce wheat, 
151 ; Italian emigration to, 151 ; Ameri- 
can agricultural implements in, 151; 
Protestant secretary of, 151, 152 ; perse- 
cution passing in, 152 ; superstitions, 
152, 153- 

Association quartet, 10, 14-20. 

Australia has become a Protestant island 
continent, 136. 



Baldwin, S. L., recording secretary, 53. 

Bangs, Nathan, founder of the Missionary 
Society, 38, 39, 42-46, 52. 

Baptist Church, missionary gifts of per 
member, 232. 

Baptist Young People's Union, 261. 

Bash, Appleton, Section Conference dis- 
cussion, 365-367. 

Bashford, J. W., address on "ItTendeth 
to Poverty," 16, 213-223 : Systematic and 
proportional giving the right Christian 
and scriptural principle, 214 ; analogy of 
one seventh of time and one tenth of in- 
come, 214, 215, 219 ; not too mechanical, 
215 ; the Sabbath an infinite gain to civ- 
ilization, 215 ; ratio should not be below 
one tenth, 216 ; the Old Testament stand- 
ard, 216; Christ's approval, 217; objec- 
tions met, 217, 218 ; possible in our 
Church, 218 ; its results religiously and 
financially, 219-223 ; giving does not im- 
poverish, 222. Participant in program, 
17, 18, 19. 

"Beloved, if God So Loved Us," 281-287. 
For analysis see McDowell, W. F. 

Berry, J. F., participant in program, 20. 

Bible, languages in which printed, 23, 34 ; 
Syriac rendering, 59; open door for 
in the Philippines and India, 75-77; re- 
lation of to missions, 94-100 ; the whole 
to be preached, 114; free in Philippines, 
141 ; class taught by fisherman, 143 ; be- 
ing circulated in Bolivia, 154 ; cause of 
Anglo-Saxon superiority, 154 ; imprison- 
ment for selling in Philippines, 186 ; doc- 
trine of tithing in, 216, 217, 251-254, 304, 305 ; 
records supernatural power, 256-258. 

Bible Society, American, referred to, 38, 
69, 70 ; estimate of its value, 142. 

Bible Society, British, little girl inspired 
organization of, 309. 

Bishop, Mrs. Isabella Bird, tells of Christ- 
less homes, 199. 

Bishops, referred to, 295 ; estimate of num- 
ber of new missionaries needed, 320. 

Board of Education, its great service to 
the missionary cause, 70. 

Board of Managers of Missionary Society, 
21. 

Bohemians, Gospel work for, 115, 120. 

Bolivia, a Bible- worker in, 154. 

Book Concern, its missionary value, 70. 

Borneo, its easy access from Manila, 139 ; 
most promising people still unreached, 
139 ; sparse population and head hunting 
in, 187 ; Dr. Luering's work in, 187 ; Chi- 
nese from Foochow forming a colony 
in, 188. 

Bowen, George, referred to, 333. 



396 



INDEX 



Bowen, J. W. E., address on " The Negro 
a Missionary Investment, a Missionary- 
Investor," 14, 100-111: Results of mission- 
ary work for the megro, has it paid ? 100 ; 
to be judged by his origin and past, 100- 
103 ; financial investment by Church so- 
cieties, 103 ; faith manifested, 103 ; negro 
Church communicants, 104 ; spiritual 
development, 104-106 ; his financial re- 
sponse, 106-108 ; as seen in our Church 
when compared with the largest negro 
Church bodies, 108-m ; redeemed char- 
acters and consecrated leaders, in. 

Brahmanism, early, a missionary re- 
ligion, 182. 

Brazil, its immense area, 148. 

Brown, John, referred to, 328. 

Buckley, J. M., address on " Metho- 
dist Missions of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury," 13, 35-54 : Methodism a part of a 
larger Christianity, 35 ; beginnings of 
our propagandism, 36 ; mission work of 
other Methodist bodies, 37 ; formation 
of our Missionary Society, 38 ; early ef- 
forts and first report, 39 ; growth and 
notable anniversaries, 40, 41 ; foreign 
missions begun, 42, 43 ; the several fields 
added by a genetic development, 44-50 ; 
the women's societies and deaconesses, 
51 ; a century's results from united ef- 
forts of many, 52-54 ; the line of secre- 
taries, 53, 54. Report on resolutions, 18. 

Buddhism, its missionary expansion, 182 ; 
referred to, 270, 307, 326. 

Bulgaria, statistics, 31 ; needs of, 31 ; why 
entered, 49. 

Burma, part of Southern Asia, 181. 

Butler, William, founder of missions in 
India and Mexico, 54 ; referred to, 182, 
195, 281. 

Butler, Mrs. William, an organizer of 
Woman's Foreign Missionary So- 
ciety, 51. 

Buttz, H. A., participant in program, 14. 



Calvin, John, his work in Geneva, 127. 

Cambridge University, 320. 

Campaign of missionary education, essen- 
tial to final success, 266 ; must be thor- 
oughgoing and extensive, 317. 

Canada, early mission work in, 41 ; mis- 
sions of " Methodist Church in Canada," 
37, 38. 

Canteen, army, its infamy, 139. 

Carey, William, referred to, 24, 195, 281. 

Carroll, H. K., address on " Home Allies 
in Our Work of Evangelization," 14, 64- 
70: World evangelization a strenuous 
campaign, 64, 65 ; Woman's Foreign 
Missionary Society, 65, 66 ; Woman's 
Home Missionary Society, 65, 66 ; Board 
of Church Extension, 67; Freedmen's 
Aid and Southern Education Society, 
67, 68; City Missions, 68, 69; Sunday 
School Union, 69 ; American Bible Soci- 
ety, 69, 70; Board of Education, 70; 
Book Concern, 70 ; Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association, 70 ; members of the 
Church, 70. Member of Program Com- 
mittee, 5 ; missionary secretary, 54. 

Chadwick, J. S., Section Conference dis- 
cussion, 364. 

Chalmers, a pioneer in city evangeliza- 
tion, 134. 

Chen Wei Cheng, address on "An Appeal 
from China," 18, 316 : Gratitude for 
privileges of education, 316 ; students 
who have given up life for their faith, 



316-, speaker's family among the mar- 
tyrs, 316 ; appeal for men and women 
ready to trust God and go forward, 316. 
From a family of martyrs, 313 ; graduate 
and teacher in Peking University, 315 ; 
foreign delegate, 315. 

Chicago and New York, and population 
of the United States in 1800, 124. 

Chile, church building in place of tent, 
150; Fowler and Grant schools, 150, 151; 
congregation in Valparaiso, 151. 

China, statistics, 31 ; needs of, 32, 33 ; be- 
ginning of mission work in, 43, 46, 47 ; 
the world's great mission field, 77 ; its 
antiquity, 78, 79 ; shock of the Peking 
tragedy, 79 ; signs of lostness, 79 ; con- 
ceit and ignorance, 79-81 ; moral corrup- 
tion, 81-83 5 irritated by Romanism and 
the Powers, 82-84 5 reform efforts, 85, 86 ; 
satanic manifestations, 86, 88 ; Boxer and 
imperial movements and the reaction, 
89, 90 ; the Christian sacrifice, 90-93 ; 
China's new day, 93 ; dominion over 
Korea and more remotely over Japan, 
155 ; her three inventions of the mari- 
ner's compass, gunpowder, and print- 
ing, 156; Japanese victory opened the 
last gateway to, 156, 157 ; the Boxer up- 
heaval resulted in an open door to every 



part of, 158 ; opium in, 269 ; gambling in, 
269 ; impurity in, 270 ; No 
vert in, 313. 



; impurity in, 270 ; North, first con- 



Chinese, outside their land, 115, 125 ; in- 
teraction, 132. 

Christ, Our Living Leader, 321-334. For 
analysis see Speer, R. E. Swing of 
world's thought toward, 133 ; his pur- 
pose of world dominion, 190, 191 ; the 
perfect model of missionary love, 243; 
the ultimate motive in missions, 286 ; 
New Testament words applied to, 326, 
3 2 7- 

Christian Advocate, a channel of mission- 
ary information, 227 ; referred to, 47. 

Christian Endeavor, United Society of, 
260-264. 

Christian stewardship enrollment, 225. 

Christianity causing great changes in 
India, 196. 

Church Extension Society, 67. 

Church Missionary Society, 297, 298. 

Cities, the six largest of the United States, 
122, 123; larger cities of Ohio, Pennsyl- 
vania, and New York, 123 ; increase of 
cities, 123, 124 ; character of population, 
125. 

City Evangelization Union, 68. 

City Problem, 121-134. For analysis see 
North, F. M. 

Civilization, non- Christian is without up- 
lifting power, 311, 312. 

Cleveland, O., invites the Convention, 6. 

Closing Address, 334-337. For analysis 
see Thoburn, J. M. 

Coit, O. B., Section Conference discussion, 
361. 

Colton, E. T., participant in program, 18. 

Confucianism, 326. 

Congo Free State, 164. 

Convention, Cleveland Missionary, 
planned, 4; Program Committee, 5; 
prayer for, 6, 7 ; sessions, 8 ; special fea- 
tures, 8-1 1 ; music of, 9; financial session, 
10 ; officers and societies represented, 10 ; 
educational exhibit, n ; results of, 11, 12 ; 
program of, 13-20; purpose of, 21-28; 
handbook of, 36 ; responsibility of dele- 
gates to, 316-321. 

Conversation, missionary, 229. 

Conversion, wins foreigners in America 



INDEX 



397 



for reforms, 114 ; genuineness of in 
India, 208, 209. 

Cooper, W. W., address on "What the Sun- 
day School Superintendent Can Do," 
16, 244-249: Can greatly advance missions 
by a high aim and organization, 244 ; 
missionary meetings and libraries, 244, 
245 ; charts and birthday offerings, 245, 
246 ; class and teacher, 246, 247 ; support 
of native scholars or workers, 247, 248 ; 
inspiration of self-devotion to missions, 
248, 249. Presiding officer at Section 
Conference, 17 ; referred to, 263. 

Cox, Melville B., foreign missionary to 
Liberia, 42 ; dying words of, 174 ; referred 
to, 24, 195, 281". 

Cromwell, Oliver, trained men for great 
tasks, 134 ; referred to, 327. 

Crouch, J. F., participant in program, 16. 

Cuba, relation to our international in- 
terests, 73. 



Daniels, C. H., participant in program, 13. 

Danish people reached by Gospel truth, 
115, 120. 

Dashiell, R. L., missionary secretary, 53. 

Day, J. R, participant in program, 15. 

Deaconess, The, as a Missionary Force, 
233-237. For analysis see Oldham, W. F. 

Deaconess work, 51, 52. 

Democracy on trial in our American 
cities, 127. 

Dennis, J. S., referred to, 23. 

Disosway, G. P., suggested organization 
of Missionary Society, 38. 

District Missionary Secretary, What He 
Can Do for Missions, 233-237. For analy- 
sis see Oldham, W. F. Ideas on district 
missionary development, 359-362. 

Doney, C. G., Section Conference discus- 
sion, 373, 374- . . 

Drees, C. W., participant m program, 14; 
referred to, 320. 

Durbin, j. P., missionary secretary, 41, 45, 
52-54, 203. 



Fliedner, his influence through the dea- 
conesses, 131. 

Foreign missions, membership in, 31 ; 
emergency in, 31-33, 

Foss, Bishop C. D., address on "What 
'Retrenchment' Means," 15,201-213: Cut- 
ting down missionary appropriations, 
201 ; great truths revitalized, 201 ; broth- 
erhood in missions, 202 ; cut in appropri- 
ations a pain to General Missionary 
Committee, 203 ; disastrous effects in the 
field, 204-206 ; scenes of heathenism in 
India, 206, 207, and of natural grandeur, 
207, 208 ; also of religious glory, 208, 209 ; 
unparalleled progress and results, 209, 
210 ; Hasan Rasa Kahn's great success, 
210, 211 ; retrenchment means laying off 
workers and limiting the work, 211 ; 
Methodism ought to march to a supreme 
conquest, 212, 213. Participant in pro- 
gram, 13, 19. 

Foss, Mrs. C. D., participant in pro- 
gram, 19. 

Foster, Bishop R. S., referred to, 183. 

Fowler, Bishop C. H., address on " Our 
Opportunity," 14, 71-94: Opportunity is 
power, 71 ; analogies in history, 71, 72 ; 
pointings of Providence, 72, 73 ; the Phil- 
ippines a national opportunity, 73-75 ; 
the call of our new possessions, 75, 76 ; 
masses and needs of India and China, 
76-89 ; Chinese disturbances, signs of 
great change, 89, 90; pathos and influ- 
ence of martyrdom, 90-93 ; appeal to the 
Church, 94. Missionary secretary, 53. 

Freedmen's Aid Society, close relation to 
mission work, 51, 68. 

French in America and Europe, and Gos- 
pel work for, 45, 115, 120. 

Frere, Sir Bartle, testimony to the effect 
of Christianity, 196. 

Friars, their abuse of power, 75, 76 ; hatred 
of Filipinos for, 75, 76 ; their immo- 
rality, 138, 140, 143 ; withdrawal of 142, 143. 

Froebel, his gift of the kindergarten, 131. 



Eastern Asia, The Open Door in, 155-163. 
For analysis see Moore, Bishop D. H. 

Ecuador, progress in education and re- 
ligious liberty, 148, 149. 

Ecumenical Missionary Conference, New 
York, 4 ; map of the world for, 8. 

Eddy, T. M., missionary secretary, 53. 

Education and Training of Young People 
in Scriptural Habits of Giving, 301-311. 
For analysis see Locke, C. E. 

Emergency, The, 29-34. For analysis see 
Leonard, A. B. 

Epworth Herald should be in homes of 
all office-bearers, 227. 

Epworth League president, presiding eld- 
ers' touch with, 225. 

European wars in Africa, end of, 164. 



Fakirs of India, 207. 

Famine in India, government officers dis- 
tributed corn through Bishop Thoburn, 
211. 

Field secretaries, election of, 4. 

Financial session, 10, 278, 279. 

Finland, statistics, 31 ; needs of, 32. 

Finlanders, successful efforts for, 120. 

Fisk, Mrs. C. B., participant in program, 
19. 

FitzGerald, Bishop J. N,, recording secre- 
tary, 53. 



Gambling, national evil in China, 269. 

Gamewell, F. D., address on "What 
Money Means for Educational Work in 
the Foreign Fields," 18, 311-315 : A means 
to an end, 311 ; civilization alone cannot 
uplift, 311, 312 ; the aim is Christian edu- 
cation and civilization, 312 ; money to 
maintain schools and mission work, 312 ; 
native ministry and the Chinese roll of 
martyrs, 312-314 ; what moderate sums 
as viewed at home would do abroad, 314, 
315 ; Chen Wei Cheng illustrates the 
benefits of our school work, 315. Pre- 
siding officer at Section Conference, 17 ; 
referred to, 3, 161. 

Ganges, providential leadings across it, 
183 ; bathing in, 206. 

General Missionary Committee, 3,4,21,203. 

George, Henry, referred to, 282. 

German Methodists, gifts of to missions, 
232. 

German missions in America, 45, 46. 

Germans in America, their evangeliza- 
tion, 116, 119, 120, 132. 

Germany and Switzerland, needs of, 31 ; 
origin of missions to, 49, 50 ; referred to, 

Giving, Education and Training of 
Young People in, 301-311. For analysis 
see Locke, C. E. Systematic and propor- 
tional, 213-223. For analysis see Bash- 



ford, 



.1,213-: 
]. W. 



39^ 



INDEX 



Gobin, H. A., participant in program, 

Goucher, J. F., address, "Introduction 
to Financial Session," 18, 278-280: The 
cooperation and prayer of all required, 
278 ; sympathy and emotion must issue 
in high resolve and action, 278, 279 ; the 
increase in collections will restore the 
cut, 279 ; the Convention should pledge 
at least a quarter million advance, 279, 
280. Member of Program Committee, 
5 ; referred to, 3, 262. 

Gracey, Mrs. J. T., address on "The Wom- 
an's Foreign Missionary Society, Its 
Equipment and Outlook," 19, 338-345 : 
Record of thirty-three years, 338 ; pres- 
ent equipment and fields, 338, 343-345; 
organization and gifts, 339, 340, 342 ; 
literature and united mission study, 
340-342. 

Grajr, D. S., Section Conference discus- 
sion, 380. 

Great Britain, flag of stands for justice 
and a free field for missions, 166 ; gives 
the African natives a fair chance, 168. 

Greeks, their Gospel needs in America, 
"5- 

Guam, station on our Pacific path of ex- 
pansion, 136. 

Gujarat, strange impression regarding, 
184, 185. 

H 

Hall, L. M., Section Conference discus- 
sion, 379. 

Hamilton, Bishop J. W., address by, 19. 
Dedicates church at Pachuca, Mexico, 
147. 

Handley, John, Section Conference dis- 
cussion, 365. 

Hannington, Bishop James, 281. 

Harris, Bishop W. L., missionary secre- 
tary, 53. 

Hartzell, Bishop J. C, address on "The 
Open Door in Africa," 15, 163-181 : The 
last continent to be opened to the Gospel, 
163 ; now mapped and known, 163 ; mar- 
velous rapidity of development, 163, 164 ; 
Livingstone's explorations, 164; partition 
of the continent among European pow- 
ers, 164, 165 ; all the vast territory now 
open to Christian forces, 165 ; popula- 
tion comparatively small, 165 ; control 
in the hands of the few white people, 
166 ; civilization and justice, 166 ; coming 
growth of the black race in numbers, 
167 ; the serious problem of the right 
training and true sphere of life for the 
native races, 167 ; English rule, 168, 169 ; 
service of the United States through 
commerce, moral influence, and Ameri- 
can negro education, 169, 170; the white 
man of America must cooperate, 170 ; re- 
sponses of the negro to the evangel of 
hope, 170, 171 ; all causes but missions 
have what they need, 172 ; the massive 
task almost untouched, 172 ; needs of 
Methodist work, 173 ; signs of promise 
and open doors in Liberia, 173-175 ; An- 
gola and Madeira Islands, 175-177 ; East 
African missions, 177-180 ; knowledge of 
and love for the field, 180, 181. Referred 
to, 258. 

Haven, Bishop Gilbert, 51. 

Haven, W. L, address on "The Words Are 
Spirit and Life," 14, 94-100: The Bible, 
the word of God, 94, 95 ; its relation to 
Christian missions and to all mankind, 
95 ; it inspires to missionary consecra- 
tion, 95, 96 ; it leads to conversion, 96, 97 ; 



it is the strength and fire of missionary 
effort, 98-100. Referred to, 263. 

Hawaii, opportunity among Japanese 
laborers in, 135; needs of American 
people in, 135 ; a stepping-stone to Asia, 
136 ; its women and also Japanese women 
in the islands being reached by the 
Woman's Home Missionary Societv, 355. 

Heathenism, strength and increase "of as 
to numbers, 64 ; evil forces working in, 
269. 

Hedstrom, Olof G., referred to, 132. 

Himalaya Mountains, 207. 

Hitchcock, Horace, Section Conference 
discussion, 378. 

Hohanshelt, W. G., Section Conference 
discussion, 360. 

Holmes, W. H., Section Conference dis- 
cussion, 359. 

Holy Spirit, his presence needed, 56, 59, 
61-63 ! prayers for in the Philippine 
work, 144 ; transforming power of in 
India, 209, 213 ; answer of to the hour, 
213 ; presence of with the presiding 
elder, 223 ; given to those who obey, 276 ; 
prepares the heart to understand Bible 
teaching, 303 ; Christ exercises leader- 
ship through, 332 ; and is made known 
by, 335- 

Home Allies in Our Work of Evangeliza- 
tion, 64-70. For analysis see Carroll, 
H. K. 

Home Church, Reasons Why It Must 
Go Forward, 18, 268-278. For analysis 
see Mott, J. R. 

Home missions, conferences and lan- 
guages, 30; formed first field of work, 
39-50 ; present missionaries and expend- 
itures for, 66. 

Humphrey, J. L., participant in program, 

1 

Impurity, 269, 270. 

India, thought turned to, 48 ; present pop- 
ulation, 64 ; the empire's great appeal, 
76, 77 ; under Protestant rule, 136 ; na- 
tives feel the influence of American 
control in Philippines, 139 ; overflow to 
Africa, 166 ; the great central portion of 
the Southern Asia mission field, 181; a 
mother of religions, 181, 182 ; marvelous 
possibilities in, 189 ; figures showing 
gains in eleven years, 208 ; camp meeting 
in, 209 ; immorality in its religions and 
life, 270. 

Indians, American, missions to, 30, 37-46. 

Industrial Training of Girls in Southern 
Schools, 348-353. For analysis see Thir- 
kield, Mrs. W. P. 

Ingram, J. E., participant in program, 19. 

Inhambane, southeastern African field, 
177, 178. 

Intemperance, 269. 

International Student Missionary Confer- 
ence, London, 4. 

Iowa plan, great merits of, 235, 236. 

"It Tendeth to Poverty," 213-223. For 
analysis see Bashford, J. W. 

Italians, in America, 115, 119 ; reached here 
and in Europe, 120, 132 ; numbers in New 
York, 125 ; resources needed for, 129, 130. 

Italy, statistics, 31 ; needs of, 31, 33. 



Jacoby, Ludwig S., referred to, 35, 132. 
Japan, statistics, 31 ; needs of, 32, 33 ; a 

favorable field, 48 ; reflex influence upon, 

132 ; impurity in, 270. 
Java, 187. 



INDEX 



399 



Jesuitism a conspiracy against civil and 
religious liberty, 176. 

Jews, to be savingly reached, 115 ; num- 
bers in New York, 125. 

John, the apostle, 281, 322. 

Johnson, J. A., Section Conference discus- 
sion, 372. 

Johnston, Hugh, participant in program, 
15 ; Section Conference discussion, 375, 
376. 

Judson, Adoniram, referred to, 24, 195. 



Kahn, Hasan Rasa, referred to, 210. 

Kidd, Benjamin, referred to, 330, 331. 

Kingsley, Bishop Calvin, referred to, 54. 

Kinnaird, Lord, 208. 

Knox, his devotion to prayer, 258. 

Korea, statistics, 31 ; needs of, 32, 33 ; con- 
nection with China and Japan, 48. 

Krueger, Paul, his attitude toward the 
negro, 168. 



Languages, fourteen in our work in the 
United States, 30, 182 ; twenty-eight in 
Southern Asia missions, 182 ; on India 
League banners, 262. 

Larson, John, a pioneer in Swedish work, 
120. 

Latin Countries, The Open Door in, 145- 
155. For analvsis see McCabe, Bishop 
C. C. 

Latin races, require Gospel light, 115 ; 
presence in our cities, 125. 

Lay workers, Section Conference dis- 
cussion, 379-381 ; resolution, 381 ; policy 
adopted, 381. 

Leak, T. J., Section Conference discus- 
sion, 371, 372. 

Leonard, A. B., address on "The Emer- 
gency," 13,29-34 : Emergency defined, 29; 
aspects in home field, 30; greatness of 
in foreign field, 31-33. Member of Pro- 
gram Committee, 5 ; address by, 19 ; 
missionary secretary, 53. 

Liberia, beginnings of mission work in, 
42 ; related to our open door in Africa, 
169; new era dawning for, 173-175; our 
first foreign mission in, 173 ; mission 
founded by Melville B- Cox, 173 ; interior 
regions invite our advance, 175. 

Lincoln, Abraham, referred to, 327. 

Literature, missionary tracts by Mission- 
ary Society, 234, 297. 

Livingstone, David, his missionary qual- 
ities, 24 ; devotion to the Bible, 98 ; in- 
spiring effect of his journeys, 164 ; ad- 
vance agent of a great movement, 195 ; 
use of incidents in his life, 229 ; his words 
concerning Christ as a foreign mission- 
ary, 258 ; the fruit of his prayers for 
Africa, 258. 

Locke, C. E., address on "The Education 
and Training of Young People in Scrip- 
tural Habits of Giving," 18, 301-311 : 
Giving is living, 301 ; inspire first to 
acceptance of God's gifts and consecra- 
tion, then give definite instruction, 302, 
303 ; Old Testament teaching as to tith- 
ing, 303-305 ; New Testament corrobora- 
tion, 305 ; New Testament adds to tithing 
the principle of giving "as God hath 
prospered," 305, 306 ; the scriptural 
method would bring overflowing treas- 
uries, 307, 308 ; success of the Church 
bound up in her youth and their right 
training, 308-311 ; suppression of soul- 
destroying vices, 309, 310. 



Luce, A. E., Section Conference discus- 
sion, 364, 365. 

Luther, Martin, revitalized the truth of 
salvation by faith only, 201 ; referred to, 
258, 327. 

M 

Mackay, Alexander, referred to, 24. 

Maclay, R. S., founder of Methodist mis- 
sions in Japan. 54. 

Madeira Islands, remarkable former work 
by Scotch physician, 176, 177; Catholic 
persecution in, 177 ; progress of Meth- 
odist work, 176, 177; Bishop Hartzell's 
headquarters, 177. 

Magruder, J. W., address on "What a 
Local Church Has Done," 16, 250-255 : 
Decline and deliverance of Wesley Chap- 
el, Cincinnati, 250; origin and results 
of Christian Stewards' League, 251-253 ; 
brings strength and simplicity into 
church work, 253 ; requires plans for 
making its blessings known, 253 ; three 
principles, 253, 254 ; conducive to revival, 
255 ; the proof of the good of obedience 
in Jewish prosperity, 255. 

Malaysia, part of Southern Asia territory, 
181 ; lines of interest, 186, 187. 

Manchuria, its seizure by Russia, 136. 

Manila, prisoners released in, 75 ; two 
churches needed in, 144. 

Manning, Cardinal, referred to, 282. 

Martyn, Henry, referred to, 281. 

Martyrs in China, 274, 275 ; banners bear- 
ing names of, 312-314. 

McCabe, Bishop C. C, address on "The 
Open Door in Latin Countries," 15, 145- 
155 : Throughout the Latin- speaking 
countries the doors are now open, 145 ; 
formerly closed, 145, 146; light in Mexico, 
146-148 ; size of and progress in South 
America, 148-155 ; bright outlook in Eu- 
ropean Latin countries, 155. Missionary 
secretary, 53, 54 ; sent first Methodist 
missionary to the Philippines, 141. 

McDowell, W. F., address on "Beloved, if 
God So Loved Us," 18, 281-287: The 
mystic John here gives a note more 
than matching Paul, 281 ; for the mis- 
sionary enterprise high and sacred 
motive alone adequate, 281-284 ; love 
divine large enough, the cross powerful 
enough, 284-286 ; the Christ is God's 
sufficient message and pledge, 286 ; the 
result anew creation, 286, 287. 

McKinley, William, view of obligation of 
the United States toward Liberia, 169. 

Medical mission work, 205, 343, 344. 

Medicine and hospitals in China, 160. 

Members of the Church an essential part 
of the success of all missionary endeav- 
or, 52, 54- ' 

Metcalf, P. H., member of association 
quartet, 13. 

Methodist Church in Canada, mission 
work of, 37, 38 ; Epworth League of, 
260. 

Methodist Episcopal Church, missions of, 
percentage of gifts to, 25, 26 ; emergency 
m, 29-34 ; new buildings needed, 26, 31 ; 
handbook of, 36; development explained, 
47-50; total expenditure and workers, 
70 ; able to meet city problem, 129-134 ; 
its missionary opportunity, 212, 213 ; 
estimated income of members of, 218 ; 
total gifts of, 218 ; total missionary 
offering, 232 ; average per member, 232 ; 
compared with other Churches, 232 ; its 
mines of wealth to be enlisted for mis- 
sions, 239, 240 ; resources in money and 



400 



INDEX 



young people, 271-273 ; gifts per member, 
318, 319. 

Methodist Episcopal Church, South, con- 
vention of, 3, 4, 62 ; fraternal representa- 
tion, 10, 11 ; missions of, 37; missionary 
institutes in, 226 ; districts " paid out/' 
228 ; Epworth League of, 260. 

Methodist Missions of the Nineteenth 
Century, 35-54. For analysis see Buck- 
ley, J. M. 

Methodist New Connection, 37. 

Methodist Protestant Church, 37. 

Mexico, statistics, 31 ; needs of, 33 ; opened 
for missions, 49 ; statistics of Methodist 
work, 146 ; building of church in, 147 ; 
school at Queretaro, 147, 148. 

Millard, C. W., participant in program, 16; 
Section Conference discussion, 359. 

Mission study classes, 235. 

Missionaries, a tribute to, 54 ; spirituality 
of, 56 ; in Africa, proportion of to Mo- 
hammedans and pagans, 172 ; returned, 
how to employ, 234, 235 ; as sources of 
information, 298, 299; estimate of new 
ones now needed, 320. 

Missionary Campaign Libraries, 225, 235. 

Missionary Service, Spiritual Preparation 
for, 55-63. For analysis see Tuttle, A. H. 

Missionary Society of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church, origin, first name, and 
scope, 38, 39 ; early reports and anniver- 
saries, 39-46; work among negroes in 
America, 42, 43 ; foreign work begun, 
41, 42 ; Melville B. Cox, first foreign 
missionary, 42 ; society incorporated, 
45 ; is the Church at work, 65, 70 ; atten- 
tion fixed on the cities, 131. 

Mohammedanism, 270, 307, 326. 

Moore, Bishop D. H., address on "The 
Open Door m Eastern Asia," 15, 155-163 : 
The field embraces Japan, Korea, and 
China, 155 ; people with a common ori- 
gin, 155 ; China's isolation, 155, 156 ; her 
three inventions, 156 ; war with Japan, 
156 ; opening of Japan, 156, 157 ; com- 
merce, science, and religion converging 
on China, 157 ; her old position gone 
through her assailing the Powers, 157, 
158 ; now everywhere open, 158 ; not yet 
transformed, 159 ; great call for schools 
and hospitals joined with evangelistic 
forces, 160 ; worth of Roman Catholic 
Church, despite, faults, 161 ; coming 
reformation, 162 ; Confucian teachings a 
moral foundation, 162 ; final victory to 
free this mighty race, 163. Address by, 
19 ; referred to, 63. 

Moore, E. B., Section Conference discus- 
sion, 380. 

Moravians, great zeal in missions, be- 
cause Bible-loving, 99. 

Mormonism, 307. 

Morrison, Robert, referred to, 24. 

Mott, J. R., address on "Reasons Why 
the Home Church Must Go Forward/' 
18, 268-278 : The forward missionary 
movement on the part of the home 
Church necessary in view of the condi- 
tion of non-Christian world, 268 ; only 
so can the ripe harvest abroad be 
reaped, 269 ; working of evil forces, 269, 
270; abounding human and divine re- 
sources, 271, 273 ; laws of sowing and 
reaping, prayer and sacrifice, 273-275 ; 
dangers if urgent call is not heeded, 
275-278. Address on "The Responsi- 
bility Resting upon the Delegates to 
this Convention," 18, 316-321 : The dele- 
gates have seen a blaze of light, 316; 
they should keep themselves informed 



of missionary tmfoldings, 317; there 
must be a broad and continuous cam- 
paign of education, 317 ; help in financial 
advance and new equipment, 318, 319; 
bring to the cause personal sacrifice, 
appeal and intercession, 320, 321. Re- 
ferred to, 3, 312. 

Mount Holyoke, 320. 

Mulberry Street Church and the China 
Mission, 132. 

Mysticism, faults of, 57, 58. 



N 

Nast, William, conversion and work, 119, 
132. 

Need of Missionary Education in the 
Home Church, 287-301. For analysis 
see Smyth, G. B. 

Negro, A Missionary Investment, a Mis- 
sionary Investor, 100-111. For analysis 
see Bowen, J. W. E. 

Negro problem, that of America and Af- 
rica compared, 167. 

New Guinea, 187. 

New York city, an early Methodist cir- 
cuit, 38 ; origin of its preachers' meeting, 
38 ; missionary work of children, 40 ; its 
population measured in home cities, 121, 
122 ; measured in foreign cities, 122. 

New Zealand a Protestant field, 136. 

Newman, Bishop J. P., in Valparaiso, 151. 

Ninde, Bishop W. X., approved League 
missionary movement, 263, 264. 

Nineteenth century, its achievements, 22 ; 
missionary progress in, 22-25 » Methodist 
missions of, 35-54. 

North, F. M., address on " Our City Prob- 
lem," 14, 121-134 : One of world impor- 
tance, i2i ; its American aspect, tax; 
problem one of extension, 121; vastness 
of New York, 121, 122 ; our six largest 
cities, 122, 123 ; the city-ward trend, 123 ; 
the rapid rise of large cities, 123, 124; 
problem one of intension, 124, 125 ; range 
of race and idea, 125 ; hunger and home- 
lessness, 126, 127 ; all personal and social 
problems involved, 127 ; the problem a 
test, 127; Ideals, methods, resources, 
128-130 ; test is opportunity, 130-133 ; op- 
Section Con- 
in pro- 
gram, 20. 

Northwestern University strong in its 
mission record, 320. 

Norwegians, open to the Gospel, 115 ; have 
been responsive to it. 120, 132. 

Nuns, pure lives and influence in the 
Philippines, 140. 



portunity is duty, 133, 134. Secti< 
f erence speaker, 19 ; participant 



Oberlin College, 320. 

O'Brien, T. A. H., Section Conference 
discussion, 372, 373. 

Ohio Wesleyan University, its missionary 
record, 320. 

Oldham, W. F., address on "What the 
District Missionary Secretary Can Do," 
16, 233-237 : He is the presiding elder's 
lieutenant, 233, 234 ; a prepared leader, 
233 ; his study of the district, 234 ; dis- 
seminates literature, 234 ; uses returned 
missionaries, 234 ; develops League, Sun- 
day school, and camp meeting possibil- 
ities, 235; pushes the "Iowa plan," 235, 
236; helps to lead the Church into a 
new missionary day, 237. Address 
on "The Deaconess as a Missionary 
Worker," 19, 357-359 : Her likeness and 
unlikeness to the Catholic nun, 357; her 



INDEX 



40I 



vital relation to our city problem, 357- 
359 ; service in hospital ana orphanage, 
358. 

Open Door Emergency Commission, ap- 
pointment of, 4. 

Open Door in Africa, 163-181. For analy- 
sis see Hartzell, Bishop J. C. 

Open Door in Eastern Asia, 155-163, For 
analysis see Moore, Bishop D. H. 

Open Door in Hawaii and the Philippines 
135-144. For analysis see Stuntz, H C. 

Open Door in Latin Countries, 145-155. For 
analysis see McCabe, Bishop C. C. 

Open Door in Southern Asia, 181-189. For 
analysis see Thoburn, Bishop J. M. 

Opium habit, 269. 

Opportunity, urgent, 277. 

Oregon, the, 283, 284. 

Organization of the convention, 3-12. 

Our City Problem, 121-134. For analysis 
see North, F. M. 

Our Foreign Populations and How to 
Reach Them, 1 12-120. For analysis see 
Addicks, G. B. 

Our Opportunity, 71-94. For analysis see 
Fowler, Bishop C. H. 



Pacific Ocean, islands and shores coming 
under Protestant influence, 136, 137. 

Palmer, A. J., missionary secretary, 54. 

Parker, Bishop E. W., referred to, 24,212. 

Parker, Mrs. E. W., an organizer of 
Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, 

Pastor, What He Can Do for Missions, 238- 
243. For analysis see Wilson, J. O. The 
key to the situation, 229, 230 ; must have 
a more profound conviction, 300; how 
best advance the cause of missions, 363- 

377* 
Paul, the apostle, referred to, 129, 243, 281, 

Peck, J. O., missionary secretary, 53. 

Peking siege, 161, 313-315. 

Peking University, 313, 315. 

Penzotti, his case changing public senti- 
ment in Peru, 149. 

Perrin, W. T., address on "What the Pre- 
siding Elder Can Do," 16, 223-231 : His 
missionary service, 223-231; character, 
study, and enthusiasm, 223, 224 ; officially 
a leader of leaders, 224-226 ; missionary 
institutes, 226, 227 ; use of literature, 227 ; 
approval of the " station plan," 227, 228 ; 
the apportionments, 228 ; indirect influ- 
ence by example and ideal, 229-231. 

Persia, outlook toward, 186. 

Personal contact, essential in reaching 
foreign peoples, 116, 117 ; power of kind 
words, 117 ; tracts have a place, 117, 118 ; 
giving help in need, 118 ; value of port 
mission, 118, 119. 

Peru, passing of the Inquisition, 149 ; Pen- 
zotti and position of public men, 149, 150. 

Peter, the apostle, source of his power, 258. 

Petersen, O. P., the father of Norwegian 
Methodism, 120 ; referred to, 132. 

Philippine Islands, The Open Door in, 135- 
144. For analysis see Stuntz, H. C. 
Needs of, 32, 33 ; quickly won for the 
United States, ' but longer process to 
assimilate, 65 ; thrust on the nation un- 
expectedly, 73-75; a great missionary 
opportunity, 75, 76; part of Southern 
Asia field, 181 ; Bishop Thoburn's lead- 
ings into, 186 ; referred to, 229. 

Pitman, Charles, missionary advocate, 
46, 52. 

26 



Place of Prayer in Missionary Work, 255- 
259. For analysis see Warren, Bishop 
H. W. 

Porto Rico, its urgent claim on Protestant 
service, 176; the Woman's Home Mis- 
sionary Society at work in, 355, 356; re- 
ferred to, 229. 

Portugal, religious liberty in, 150. 

Portuguese in America, 115. 

Potter, J. W., Section Conference discus- 
sion, 371. 

Prayer, Its Place in Missionary Work, 255- 
259. For analysis see Warren, Bishop 
H. W. Victory through, 231 ; law of, 
274. 

Presbyterian Church, living link plan of, 
228 ; missionary gifts per member, 232, 
3!9- 

Presiding Elder, What He Can Do to Aid 
in Missionary Movement, 223-231. For 
analysis see Perrin, W. T. Best plans 
for promoting mission interests, 359-362. 

Presiding elder's district, missionary 
policy for adopted, 362. 

Presiding elders, one fourth of present at 
Cleveland, 280. 

Press and literature, in Philippines, 143 ; 
in Mexico, 146 ; in Africa, 174, 176, 178 ; 
the Church papers, 295, 296. 

Primitive Methodist Church, 37. 

Program Committee, 5. 

Protestant Episcopal Church calls for one 
million dollars for the Philippines, 319. 

Protestant expansion in the Pacific, 136- 
138. 

Purpose of the Convention, 21-28, For 
analysis see Andrews, Bishop E. G. 

Q 

Quarterly Conference, Church leaders 
and officers can be inspired to action by 
presiding elder, 224-226. 

R 

Reasons Why the Home Church Must Go 
Forward, 268-278. For analysis see 
Mott, J. R. 

Reeder, J. L., Section Conference discus- 
sion, 369, 370. 

Reid, J. M., missionary secretary, 53, 183. 

Rescue mission work and its place, 131. 

Responsibility Resting upon Delegates to 
This Convention, 316-321. For analysis 
see Mott, J. R. 

Revival, the missionary collection's best 
friend, 230. 

Riis, Jacob, his estimate of poverty, 126. 

Roman Catholicism, contrast to Metho- 
dism, 48, 49 ; its effect superior to that of 
heathen religions, 140 ; oppressive and 
persecuting tendencies, 143, 177 ; super- 
stitions, 152, 153 ; worth of, despite 
faults, 161 ; its real strength in the work 
of its sisterhoods, 357. 

Rome, opening in for Protestant work, 49. 

Russia, stopped by India fence, 136 ; trans- 
Siberian line to Eastern Asia, 136 : pur- 
pose toward Manchuria, Korea, Japan, 
136, 137 ; influence of Dewey's victory, 
137. 

Rust, Mrs. R. S., referred to, 51. 



Saloon should be destroyed, 310. 

Samoa, a Pacific stepping-stone to the 

Orient, 136. 
Savonarola and Florence, 127. 



402 



INDEX 



Scandinavia, Methodist statistics, 31 ; 
needs of, 32 ; rise of missions in, 50. 

Scandinavian Methodists, large average 
gifts for missions, 232. 

Schools, under American teachers in the 
Philippines, 138 ; in Mexico, 146-148 ; in 
South America, 148-152 ; in China, 159 ; 
in Africa, 174-180 ; a part of mission en- 
terprise, 205 ; of Woman's Foreign Mis- 
sionary Society, 344 2 345- 

Settlements a factor in city uplift, 131. 

Sheridan, W. F., Section Conference dis- 
cussion, 367, 368. 

Singapore, its strategic position, 168, 187. 

Slavic races need the Gospel, 115. 

Smith, C. W., participant in program, 13. 

Smith, G. B., Section Conference discus- 
sion, 360, 361. 

Smyth, G. B., address on " The Need of 
Missionary Information in the Home 
Church, 18, 287-301 : A frank presentation 
required, 287-291 ; the glory of Christian 
altruism, 289; missionaries misrepre- 
sented by travelers, 291 ; true views of 
the work, 292, 293 ; sources of informa- 
tion, missionary secretaries, 294 ; the 
bishops, 295 ; the official press, 295-297 ; 
missionary literature, 297; the mission- 
aries, 298, 299 ; the pastors, 300, 301. Sec- 
tion Conference discussion, 374, 375. 

Somerset, Lady Henry, 198. 

South African Republic, its radical defect, 
168; treatment of natives, 168. 

South African war, 164. 

South America, statistics, 31 ; needs of, 
31, 33 ; mission beginnings in, 44 ; earl}*- 
religious view of, 48 ; great size, 148 ; 
status of Christian work in several 
countries, 148-155. 

Southern Asia, The Open Door in, 181-189. 
For analysis see Thoburn, Jo M. Sta- 
tistics, 31 ; needs of, 32, 33. See also 
India, Malaysia, Philippines, and Foss, 
Bishop C. D. 

Spanish people not to be overlooked, 115=, 

Spanish reverses, 145, 146. 

Speer, R. E., address on " Christ Our Liv- 
ing Leader," 20, 321-334 ; The relation of 
Christ to Christianity, 321, 322; his own 
statement, and that of Paul, make him 
the living Leader, 322, 323 ; this distin- 

, guishes his religion, 323, 324 ; present 
need of living fellowship with him, 325 ; 
Christ's leadership and mastership su- 
preme, 326-334. 

Spiritual Preparation for Missionary 
Service, 55-63. For analysis see Tuttle, 
A. H. 

Station plan, striking results of, 228, 235. 

Statistics, nineteenth century progress, 
23 ; missionary gifts show small gains in, 
25 ; summary of Methodist missions, 31 ; 
increase in heathen population, 64 ; Bible 
circulation, 69 ; Freedmen's Aid, 103 ; the 
negro's response, 107-m ; city popula- 
tions, 122-124 ; foreign population, 125 ; 
Philippine hearers, 142 ; African popula- 
tion, 165-167; Southern Asian popula- 
tion, 181 ; gains of eleven years in India, 
208; Methodist Episcopal Church, in- 
come and gifts, 218 ; total missionary 
offerings, 232 ; average per member, 232, 
236 ; wealth of Protestant Christians of 
the United States, 272 ; their possible 
gift to missions, 272 ; what the Methodist 
Episcopal Church or League might 
give, 272, 318 ; average gifts not recently 
increased, 319 ; subscriptions or pledges 
at the Financial Session, 280 ; equipment 
planned by other Churches and our 



needs, 31, 319 ; proportion in Twentieth 
Century Thank Offering, 319. 

Steele, Daniel, love and missions, 230. 

Stewards, 225. 

Stewart, L. H., participant in Section 
Conference discussion, 370. 

Storrs, R. S., illustration, 212. 

Strobridge, G. E., Section Conference 
discussion, 376, 377. 

Student Missionary Campaign, 225, 235. 

Student Volunteer Movement, Toronto 
Convention of, 5 ; Cleveland Convention 
of, 262, 263 ; referred to, 24, 195, 225. 

Stuntz, H. C, address on " The Open Door 
in Hawaii and the Philippines," 15, 135- 
144 : Open doors among the natives and 
Japanese in Hawaii, 135; our providential 
entrance into the Philippines, 135-137 ; we 
have brought in an era of justice, 138 ; 
American school-teachers, 138 ; a new 
language and sanitation, 138, 139 ; wide 
sphere of Christian influence opened, 
139 ; prepared for a better type of Chris- 
tianity, 140; opening of the field and the 
work, 140-142 ; Bishop Thoburn and Za- 
mora, 141, 142 ; eager hearers, 142, 143 ; 
converts and needs, 143, 144; Christian 
press and literature, 143. Section Con- 
ference discussion, 361, 362. 

Sunday School Superintendent, What 
He Can Do for Missions, 16, 244-249. For 
analysis see Cooper, W. W. Presiding 
elder's helpful relation to, 224, 225 ; dis- 
trict secretary to aid, 235. 

Sunday schools, an ally of the Missionary 
Society, 69 ; increase in, 69 ; conversions 
in, 69 ; class missionary spirit, 246 ; pri- 
mary organization, 246 ; a most promis- 
ing missionary field, 259 ; should give 
definite instruction as to giving, 303 ; 
Methodist young woman in origin of, 309. 

Sutherland, G. F., Section Conference dis- 
cussion, 373. 

Swedes, the Gospel for, 115, 119; success 
among, 120. 



Taylor, E. M., address on "Why the 
World Should be Speedily Evangelized," 
15, 189-199 : It will bring the kingdom of 
heaven into human life, 189 ; the mind 
and purpose of Christ, 190, 191 ; reflex in- 
fluence of mission effort, 191, 192 ; it 
means the loyal use of opportunity, 193- 
195; expresses gratitude for great work 
accomplished, 195, 196 ; missionary con- 
version of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, 
196-198 ; the appeal of paganism, 199. 
Quick result if the Church could both 
be revived and give the tithe, 255. Par- 
ticipant in program, 13, 17 ; Section Con- 
ference discussion, 363. 

Taylor, S. Earl, address on "Young Peo- 
ple and Missions," 17, 259-267: The 
term " young people " includes Sunday 
schools, young people's societies, and 
Methodist colleges, 259 ; a well-organized 
army, 261 ; fitted for world enterprise, 261 ; 
divine impulse in the movement, 262, 
263 ; period of simple growth passing, 263 ; 
the goal and the training of leaders, 264 ; 
a part of Methodism and the future 
Church, 264; inspiring elements of youth, 
265 ; a campaign of education, 266 ; an ap- 
peal^ challenge, and a prophecy, 266, 267. 
Member and secretary of Program 
Committee, 5. 

Taylor, Bishop William, his missionary 
spirit born of Methodism, 52 ; his career 
a part of Methodist missions, 52 ; the 



INDEX 



403 



fields he developed, 52 ; his first book, 
132 ; mission building at Loanda, 175 ; a 
leader of the advance, 195 ; a model in 
his devotion, 243 ; referred to, 229. 

Terry, David, recording secretary, 53. 

Teutonic peoples, the Gospel for, 115. 

Thirkield, Mrs. W. P., address on "The 
Value of Industrial Training in Our 
Southern Schools," 19, 348-353 : The 
Woman's Home Missionary Society's 
industrial training of girls in Southern 
schools a greatly needed and most val- 
uable work, 348, 349 ; those so trained 
tested in real life, 349 ; foundation work 
for future mothers and homes, 350, 351 ; 
an offset to the forces of ignorance, vice, 
and crime, 351-353. 

Thoburn, Bishop J. M., address on "The 
Open Door in Southern Asia," 15, 181-189 : 
The field defined, 181 ; progress and key 
position of our missions, 181 ; India a 
mother of religions, 181, 182 ; work in 
twenty-eight languages, 182 ; its provi- 
dential unfoldment, 183-185 ; prophetic 
conviction as to the Philippines, 185, 186 ; 
outpost toward Persia, 186 ; develop- 
ments from Singapore. 186, 187 ; begin- 
nings in Borneo, 187 ; pledge of a head- 
hunter, 187, 188 ; Methodism's new May- 
flower, 188 ; multitudes awaiting bap- 
tism, 188, 189 ; one million converted 
Church members a near possibility 
in India, 189; ten million moving 
Christward in ten years, 189. "Clos- 
ing Address," 20, 334-337 : A new era, 
334> 335 ; preaching Christ the preemi- 
nent work, 335 ; knowing him in per- 
sonal experience and leadership, 336, 
337 ; this movement means the inaugu- 
ration of America's greatest revival, 
337. Prophecy concerning Philippines, 
141 ; official opening of the:fieldjas a mis- 
sion, 141, 175 ; God's directing hand, 183- 
186; estimate of possible progress in 
India, 209-211 ; his impregnable faith, 
330 ; participant in program, 14, 17, 18 ; 
referred to, 3. 

Thoburn, Miss Isabella, referred to, 51, 281. 

Thompson, D. D., participant in pro- 
gram, 17, 19. 

Tithing, Old Testament sanction for, 216 ; 
confirmed by Christ, 217 ; possible ex- 
ceptions of necessity and mercy, 217, 
218 ; no concrete case of real difficulty 
known, 218 ; objection by the rich and 
comfortable rather than the poor, 218 ; 
Church can be brought to this propor- 
tion, 218 ; the Jewish demonstration, 
222 ; its results would meet the crisis, 
222, 223 ; presiding elder's practice of, 
230; plan of Thomas Kane inspired 
movement at Cincinnati, 251 ; special 
points of tithing at Wesley Chapel, 251- 
254 ; Bible teaching, 304, 305 ; false reli- 
gions made strong by, 307. 

Trimble, J. B., Section Conference discus- 
sion, 359, 360. 

Trimble, J. M., missionary secretary, 53. 

Tuttle, A. H., address on " Spiritual Prep- 
aration for Missionary Service," 13, 55- 
63 : Illustrated by missionaries, 55, 56 ; 
the Holy Spirit, 56, 57 ; fellowship with 
God, 58, 59 ; self-denial and unworldli- 
ness, 60-62 ; faith, 60, 61 ; deeper spiritual 
life, 62, 63. 

Tuttle, D. L., Section Conference discus- 
sion, 379, 380. 

Twentieth Century Thank Offering, prod- 
uct of faith of a Methodist girl, 309 ; 
inadequate share for missions, 319. 



XT 

Umtali, center of Methodist East African 
missions, 178. 

United Methodist Free Church, 37. 

United States, obligation of to God, 93, 94 ; 
strategic position of as factor in world 
evangelization, 135, 136; mingling of 
racial qualities in, 135, 136 ; influence of 
in Africa, 169. 



Value of Industrial Training in Our South- 
ern Schools, 348-353. For analysis see 
Thirkield, Mrs. W. P. 

Vickrey, C. V., participant in program, 
17- 

Vincent, Bishop J. H., participant in pro- 
gram, 16. 

W 

Wade, C. U., Section Conference discus- 
sion, 360. 

Warne, Bishop F. W., organization of a 
Filipino church, 142 ; visits outpost 
toward Persia, 186. 

Warren, Bishop H. W., address on "The 
Place of Prayer in Missionary Work," 16, 
255-259 : Key of power and success in mis- 
sions, 255, 256 ; God the ultimate source 
of power, 256 ; mights that are immeas- 
urable, 256, 257 ; revealed in the Bible, 
257, 258 ; Christ's prayer life, 258 ; Peter, 
Luther, Wesley, Knox, Livingstone, 
258 ; each can bring this contribution to 
Gospel triumph, 258, 259. Participant in 
program, 15 ; report address to the 
Church, 20. 

Washburn, G. F., participant in program, 
19. 

Welsh, Gospel success among, 120. 

Wesley Chapel, Cincinnati, What It Has 
Done by use of the tithing system, 250- 
255. For analysis see Magruder, J. W. 

Wesley, John, early work in America, 35, 
36; his method at Litchfield, 114; his 
large constructive outlook, 129 ; truths 
given fresh power by, 201, 202 ; prayer 
life of, 258. 

Wesleyan Methodist Church, missions of, 
36, 37 ; strong mission work of in Africa, 
172, 173- 

What a Local Church Has Done, 250-255. 
For analysis see Magruder, J. W. 

What Money Means for Educational 
Work in the Foreign Fields, 311-315. For 
analysis see Gamewell, F. D. 

What "Retrenchment" Means, 201-213. 
For analysis see Foss, Bishop C. D. 

What the District Missionary Secretary 
Can Do, 233-237. For analysis see Old- 
ham, W. F. 

What the Pastor Can Do, 238-243. For 
analysis see Wilson, J. O. 

What the Presiding Elder Can Do, 223-231. 
For analysis see Perrin, W. T. 

What the Sunday School Superintendent 
Can Do, 244-249. For analysis see 
Cooper, W. W. 

White man's burden in Africa, 166, 167. 

Why the World Should be Speedily Evan- 
gelized, 189-199. For analysis see Tay- 
lor, E. M. 

Wiley, Bishop I. W., buried in China, 54. 

Willard, Frances, referred to, 198. 

Williams, Mrs. Delia L., address on "The 
Work of the Woman's Home Missionary 
Society," 19, 346-348 : Varied activities 
of, 346, 347 ; membership, gifts, and prog- 
ress, 347. See also Alaska, Hawaii, 



404 



INDEX 



and Porto Rico ; Industrial Training ; 
and Deaconess. 

Wilson, J. O., address on "What the Pastor 
Can Do," 16, 238-243: From the pastoral 
ranks come the various Church and mis- 
sionary officers, 238-243 ; the pivotal man, 
238 ; a missionary pastorate will make a 
missionary people, 238; his obligation re- 
specting missions, 239 ; to the collection, 
239 ; to inspire generous support from 
the mines of wealth in the Church, 239, 
240 ; heart growth, 241 ; world thoughts, 
plans, and prayers, 242 ; a cosmopolitan 
spirit, 242 ; the study of model mission- 
aries, 242, 243 ; the creation of a mission- 
ary Church, 243. 

Winton, Rev. G-. B., participant in pro- 
gram, 16. 

Wishard, L. D., participant in program, 
15 ; Section Conference discussion, 380, 

Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, Its 
Equipment and Outlook, 338-345. For 
analysis see Gracey, Mrs. J. T. Pioneer 
forms of and organization, 51 ; contribu- 
tions in 1901, 65 ; spirit of its workers, 
66 ; schools in Mexico, 148 ; referred to, 
225, 297, 319. 

Woman's Home Missionary Society, Work 
of, 346-348. For analysis see Williams, 
Mrs. Delia L. Organization of, 51 ; lines 
of activity, 66 r 225. 

Woman's Mission Friend commended, 
297. 



Womanhood, Anglo-Saxon transformed, 
198 ; that of Asia must have Christ, 199. 

Wood, J. W., his great work in Ecuador, 
148 ; persecution and its result, 149. 

Woodruff, Mrs. May L., address on "Alas- 
ka, Hawaii, and Porto Rico," 19, 354-356. 
See under these titles. 

Words Are Spirit and Life, 94-100. For 
analysis see Haven, W. I. 

Work of the Woman's Home Missionary 
Society, 346-348. For analysis see Wil- 
liams, Mrs. D. L. 

World's Student Christian Federation, 

World-Wide Missions, to be largely used, 
227 ; sent to those giving a dollar for 
missions, 234. 

Y 

Young, J. B., Section Conference discus- 
sion, 369. 

Young Men's Christian Association, 70. 

Young People and Missions, 233-237. For 
analysis see Taylor, S. Earl. Achieve- 
ments of, 265, 308, 309 ; methods of pro- 
moting missionary interest among, 382. 



Zamora, Nicolas, preaches and is or- 
dained, 141, 142 ; scholarship of, 142. 

Ziegenbalg, study of the Bible on ship- 
board, 98. 

Zion's Herald, value in missionary edu- 
cation, 227. 



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